Chapter XXIX: Section V: Imputation Of Adam’s Sin To His Posterity (3)

As a corrective to the atomistic spirit of Federalism we may quote
a view which seems to us far more tenable, though it perhaps goes
to the opposite extreme. Dr. H. H. Bawden writes: “The self is the
product of a social environment. An ascetic self is so far forth
not a self. Selfhood and consciousness are essentially social. We
are members one of another. The biological view of selfhood
regards it as a function, activity, process, inseparable from the
social matrix out of which it has arisen. Consciousness is simply
the name for the functioning of an organism. Not that the soul is
a secretion of the brain, as bile is a secretion of the liver; not
that the mind is a function of the body in any such materialistic
sense. But that mind or consciousness is only the growing of an
organism, while, on the other hand, the organism is just that
which grows. The psychical is not a second, subtle, parallel form
of energy causally interactive with the physical; much less is it
a concomitant series, as the parallelists hold. Consciousness is
not an order of existence or a thing, but rather a function. It is
the organization of reality, the universe coming to a focus,
flowering, so to speak, in a finite centre. Society is an organism
in the same sense as the human body. The separation of the units
of society is no greater than the separation of the unit factors
of the body,—in the microscope the molecules are far apart.
Society is a great sphere with many smaller spheres within it.

“Each self is not impervious to other selves. Selves are not
water-tight compartments, each one of which might remain complete
in itself, even if all the others were destroyed. But there are
open sluiceways between all the compartments. Society is a vast
plexus of interweaving personalities. We are members one of
another. What affects my neighbor affects me, and what affects me
ultimately affects my neighbor. The individual is not an
impenetrable atomic unit.... The self is simply the social whole
coming to consciousness at some particular point. Every self is
rooted in the social organism of which it is but a local and
individual expression. A self is a mere cipher apart from its
social relations. As the old Greek adage has it: ‘He who lives
quite alone is either a beast or a god.’ ” While we regard this
exposition of Dr. Bawden as throwing light upon the origin of
consciousness and so helping our contention against the Federal
theory of sin, we do not regard it as proving that consciousness,
once developed, may not become relatively independent and
immortal. Back of society, as well as back of the individual, lies
the consciousness and will of God, in whom alone is the guarantee
of persistence. For objections to the Federal theory, see Fisher,
Discussions, 401 _sq._; Bib. Sac., 20:455-462, 577; New Englander,
1868:551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.

5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.

This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606-1655), professor of Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam’s sin was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was condemned by the Synod of the French Reformed Church at Charenton in 1644, he published the view which now bears his name.

According to this view, all men are born physically and morally depraved; this native depravity is the source of all actual sin, and is itself sin; in strictness of speech, it is this native depravity, and this only, which God imputes to men. So far as man’s physical nature is concerned, this inborn sinfulness has descended by natural laws of propagation from Adam to all his posterity. The soul is immediately created by God, but it becomes actively corrupt so soon as it is united to the body. Inborn sinfulness is the consequence, though not the penalty, of Adam’s transgression.

There is a sense, therefore, in which Adam’s sin may be said to be imputed to his descendants,—it is imputed, not immediately, as if they had been in Adam or were so represented in him that it could be charged directly to them, corruption not intervening,—but it is imputed mediately, through and on account of the intervening corruption which resulted from Adam’s sin. As on the Federal theory imputation is the cause of depravity, so on this theory depravity is the cause of imputation. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed upon all men, because all sinned by possessing a depraved nature.”

See Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera,
1:709—“The sensitive soul is produced from the parent; the
intellectual or rational soul is directly created. The soul, on
entering the corrupted physical nature, is not passively
corrupted, but becomes corrupt actively, accommodating itself to
the other part of human nature in character.” 710—So this soul
“contracts from the vitiosity of the dispositions of the body a
corresponding vitiosity, not so much by the action of the body
upon the soul, as by that essential appetite of the soul by which
it unites itself to the body in a way accommodated to the
dispositions of the body, as liquid put into a bowl accommodates
itself to the figure of a bowl—sicut vinum in vase acetoso. God
was therefore neither the author of Adam’s fall, nor of the
propagation of sin.”

Herzog, Encyclopædia, art.: Placeus—“In the title of his works we
read ‘Placæus’; he himself, however, wrote ‘Placeus,’ which is the
more correct Latin form [of the French ‘de la Place’]. In Adam’s
first sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning and
the first habitual sin (corrupted disposition). The former was
transient; the latter clung to his person, and was propagated to
all. It is truly sin, and it is imputed to all, since it makes all
condemnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted
disposition, but not in the imputation of the first act of Adam,
except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited
depravity.” Fisher, Discussions, 389—“Mere native corruption is
the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term
‘imputation’ by _Rom. 2:26_—‘_If therefore the uncircumcision keep
the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be
reckoned_ [imputed] _for circumcision?_’ Our own depravity is the
necessary condition of the imputation of Adam’s sin, just as our
own faith is the necessary condition of the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness.”

Advocates of Mediate Imputation are, in Great Britain, G. Payne,
in his book entitled: Original Sin; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
Christianity, 1:196-332; and James S. Candlish, Biblical Doctrine
of Sin, 111-122; in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of
Christian Doctrine, 169, 284, 285, 314-323; and E. G. Robinson,
Christian Theology. The editor of Dr. Smith’s work says: “On the
whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a
note which reads thus: ‘Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation
is wholly satisfactory.’ Understand by ‘Mediate Imputation’ a full
statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it;
understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation
of the facts, and it was ‘not wholly satisfactory.’ ” Dr. Smith
himself says, 316—“Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral
conditions of human nature as from Adam—generic: and it is not a
doctrine respecting personal liabilities and desert. For the
latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking,
it is not sin, which is ill-deserving, but only the sinner. The
ultimate distinction is here: There is a well-grounded difference
to be made between personal desert, strictly personal character
and liabilities (of each individual under the divine law, as
applied specifically, _e. g._, in the last adjudication), and a
generic moral condition—the antecedent ground of such personal
character.

“The distinction, however, is not between what has moral quality
and what has not, but between the moral state of each as a member
of the race, and his personal liabilities and desert as an
individual. This original sin would wear to us only the character
of evil, and not of sinfulness, were it not for _the fact_ that we
feel guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us
in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a sense
of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover,
redemption is also necessary to remove it, which shows that it is
a moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two
extreme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin
consists in sinning. The guilt of Adam’s sin is—this exposure,
this liability on account of such native corruption, our having
the same nature in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam’s sin is
_not to be separated_ from the existence of this evil disposition.
And this guilt is what is imputed to us.” See art. on H. B. Smith,
in Presb. Rev., 1881; “He did not fully acquiesce in Placeus’s
view, which makes the corrupt nature by descent the only ground of
imputation.”

The theory of Mediate Imputation is exposed to the following objections:

A. It gives no explanation of man’s responsibility for his inborn depravity. No explanation of this is possible, which does not regard man’s depravity as having had its origin in a free personal act, either of the individual, or of collective human nature in its first father and head. But this participation of all men in Adam’s sin the theory expressly denies.

The theory holds that we are responsible for the effect, but not
for the cause—“post Adamum, non propter Adamum.” But, says Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:209, 331—“If this sinful tendency be in us
solely through the act of others, and not through our own deed,
they, and not we, are responsible for it,—it is not our guilt, but
our misfortune. And even as to actual sins which spring from this
inherent sinful tendency, these are not strictly our own, but the
acts of our first parents through us. Why impute them to us as
actual sins, for which we are to be condemned? Thus, if we deny
the existence of guilt, we destroy the reality of sin, and _vice
versa_.” Thornwell, Theology, 1:348, 349—This theory “does not
explain the sense of guilt, as connected with depravity of
nature,—how the feeling of ill-desert can arise in relation to a
state of mind of which we have been only passive recipients. The
child does not reproach himself for the afflictions which a
father’s follies have brought upon him. But our inward corruption
we do feel to be our own fault,—it is our crime as well as our
shame.”

B. Since the origination of this corrupt nature cannot be charged to the account of man, man’s inheritance of it must be regarded in the light of an arbitrary divine infliction—a conclusion which reflects upon the justice of God. Man is not only condemned for a sinfulness of which God is the author, but is condemned without any real probation, either individual or collective.

Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate
Imputation, because: “1. It casts so faint a light on the justice
of God in the imputation of Adam’s sin to adults who do as he did.
2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into
existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The
inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a
riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding.” It is unjust to
hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the
cause.

C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the sin of the race in Adam (Rom. 5:16, 18). It moreover does violence to the Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of “all sinned,” in Rom. 5:12—words which imply the oneness of the race with Adam, and the causative relation of Adam’s sin to our guilt.

Certain passages which Dr. H. B. Smith, System, 317, quotes from
Edwards, as favoring the theory of Mediate Imputation, seem to us
to favor quite a different view. See Edwards, 2:482 _sq._—“The
first existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to
be looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their
participation in Adam’s first sin; it is, as it were, the extended
pollution of that sin through the whole tree, by virtue of the
constituted union of the branches with the root.... I am humbly of
the opinion that, if any have supposed the children of Adam to
come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam’s
sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart,
they have not so well considered the matter.” And afterwards:
“Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co-existence) is in
consequence of the union,”—but “not properly a consequence of the
imputation of his sin; nay, rather antecedent to it, as it was in
Adam himself. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of
that sin, are both the consequences of that established union; but
yet in such order, that the evil disposition is first, and the
charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam
himself.”

Edwards quotes Stapfer: “The Reformed divines do not hold
immediate and mediate imputation _separately_, but always
together.” And still further, 2:493—“And therefore the sin of the
apostasy is not theirs, merely because God imputes it to them; but
it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it
to them.” It seems to us that Dr. Smith mistakes the drift of
these passages from Edwards, and that in making the identification
with Adam primary, and imputation of his sin secondary, they favor
the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship rather than the theory of
Mediate Imputation. Edwards regards the order as (1) apostasy; (2)
depravity; (3) guilt;—but in all three, Adam and we are, by divine
constitution, one. To be guilty of the depravity, therefore, we
must first be guilty of the apostasy.

For the reasons above mentioned we regard the theory of Mediate
Imputation as a half-way house where there is no permanent
lodgment. The logical mind can find no satisfaction therein, but
is driven either forward, to the Augustinian doctrine which we are
next to consider, or backward, to the New School doctrine with its
atomistic conception of man and its arbitrary sovereignty of God.
On the theory of Mediate Imputation, see Cunningham, Historical
Theology, 1:496-639; Princeton Essays, 1:129, 154, 168; Hodge,
Syst. Theology, 2:205-214; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:158;
Baird, Elohim Revealed, 46, 47, 474-479, 504-507.

6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

This theory was first elaborated by Augustine (354-430), the great opponent of Pelagius; although its central feature appears in the writings of Tertullian (died about 220), Hilary (350), and Ambrose (374). It is frequently designated as the Augustinian view of sin. It was the view held by the Reformers, Zwingle excepted. Its principal advocates in this country are Dr. Shedd and Dr. Baird.

It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole race at the time of Adam’s transgression existed, not individually, but seminally, in him as its head. The total life of humanity was then in Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam’s will was yet the will of the species. In Adam’s free act, the will of the race revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him.”

Adam’s sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed as one moral person or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to evil. In Rom. 5:12—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed unto all men, because all sinned in Adam their natural head.”

Milton, Par. Lost, 9:414—“Where likeliest he [Satan] might find
The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his
purpos’d prey.” Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3:7—“In Adamo
omnes tune peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille
unus fuerunt”; De Civ. Dei, 13, 14—“Omnes enim fuimus in illo uno,
quando omnes fuimus ille unus.... Nondum erat nobis singillatim
creata et distributa forma in qua singuli viveremus, sed jam
natura erat seminalis ex qua propagaremur.” On Augustine’s view,
see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2; 43-45 (System Doct., 2:338, 339)—In
opposition to Pelagius who made sin to consist in single acts,
“Augustine emphasized the sinful state. This was a deprivation of
original righteousness + inordinate love. Tertullian, Cyprian,
Hilarius, Ambrose had advocated traducianism, according to which,
without their personal participation, the sinfulness of all is
grounded in Adam’s free act. They incur its consequences as an
evil which is, at the same time, punishment of the inherited
fault. But Irenæus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, say Adam was not
simply a single individual, but the universal man. We were
comprehended in him, so that in him we sinned. On the first view,
the posterity were passive; on the second, they were active, in
Adam’s sin. Augustine represents both views, desiring to unite the
universal sinfulness involved in traducianism with the universal
will and guilt involved in cooperation with Adam’s sin. Adam,
therefore, to him, is a double conception, and = individual +
race.”

Mozley on Predestination, 402—“In Augustine, some passages refer
all wickedness to original sin; some account for different degrees
of evil by different degrees of original sin (Op. imp. cont.
Julianum, 4:128—‘Malitia naturalis.... in aliis minor, in aliis
major est’); in some, the individual seems to add to original sin
(De Correp. et Gratia, c. 13—‘Per liberum arbitrium alia insuper
addiderunt, alii majus, alii minus, sed omnes mali.’ De Grat. et
Lib. Arbit., 2:1—‘Added to the sin of their birth sins of their
own commission’; 2:4—‘Neither denies our liberty of will, whether
to choose an evil or a good life, nor attributes to it so much
power that it can avail anything without God’s grace, or that it
can change itself from evil to good’).” These passages seem to
show that, side by side with the race-sin and its development,
Augustine recognized a domain of free personal decision, by which
each man could to some extent modify his character, and make
himself more or less depraved.

The theory of Augustine was not the mere result of Augustine’s
temperament or of Augustine’s sins. Many men have sinned like
Augustine, but their intellects have only been benumbed and have
been led into all manner of unbelief. It was the Holy Spirit who
took possession of the temperament, and so overruled the sin as to
make it a glass through which Augustine saw the depths of his
nature. Nor was his doctrine one of exclusive divine
transcendence, which left man a helpless worm at enmity with
infinite justice. He was also a passionate believer in the
immanence of God. He writes: “I could not be, O my God, could not
be at all, wert not thou in me; rather, were not I in thee, of
whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are are all
things.... O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is
restless, till it find rest in thee.—The will of God is the very
nature of things—Dei voluntas rerum natura est.”

Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, Introduction, very
erroneously declares that “the Augustinian theology rests upon the
transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle, and at every
point appears as an inferior rendering of the earlier
interpretation of the Christian faith.” On the other hand, L. L.
Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 69, 368-397, shows that, while
Athanasius held to a dualistic transcendence, Augustine held to a
theistic immanence: “Thus the Stoic, Neo-Platonic immanence, with
Augustine, supplants the Platonico-Aristotelian and Athanasian
transcendence.” Alexander, Theories of the Will, 90—“The theories
of the early Fathers were indeterministic, and the pronounced
Augustinianism of Augustine was the result of the rise into
prominence of the doctrine of original sin.... The early Fathers
thought of the origin of sin in angels and in Adam as due to free
will. Augustine thought of the origin of sin in Adam’s posterity
as due to inherited evil will.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums,
161—“To this day in Catholicism inward and living piety and the
expression of it is in essence wholly Augustinian.”

Calvin was essentially Augustinian and realistic; see his
Institutes, book 2, chap. 1-3; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:505, 506,
with the quotations and references. Zwingle was not an
Augustinian. He held that native vitiosity, although it is the
uniform occasion of sin, is not itself sin: “It is not a crime,
but a condition and a disease.” See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct. 2:256,
with references. Zwingle taught that every new-born child—thanks
to Christ’s making alive of all those who had died in Adam—is as
free from any taint of sin as Adam was before the fall. The
Reformers, however, with the single exception of Zwingle, were
Augustinians, and accounted for the hereditary guilt of mankind,
not by the fact that all men were represented in Adam, but that
all men participated in Adam’s sin. This is still the doctrine of
the Lutheran church.

The theory of Adam’s Natural Headship regards humanity at large as
the outgrowth of one germ. Though the leaves of a tree appear as
disconnected units when we look down upon them from above, a view
from beneath will discern the common connection with the twigs,
branches, trunk, and will finally trace their life to the root,
and to the seed from which it originally sprang. The race of man
is one because it sprang from one head. Its members are not to be
regarded atomistically, as segregated individuals; the deeper
truth is the truth of organic unity. Yet we are not philosophical
realists; we do not believe in the separate existence of
universals. We hold, not to _universalia ante rem_, which is
extreme realism; nor to _universalia post rem_, which is
nominalism; but to _universalia in re_, which is moderate realism.
Extreme realism cannot see the trees for the wood; nominalism
cannot see the wood for the trees; moderate realism sees the wood
in the trees. We hold to “_universalia in re_, but insist that the
universals must be recognized as _realities_, as truly as the
individuals are” (H. B. Smith, System, 319, note). Three acorns
have a common life, as three spools have not. Moderate realism is
true of organic things; nominalism is true only of proper names.
God has not created any new tree nature since he created the first
tree; nor has he created any new human nature since he created the
first man. I am but a branch and outgrowth of the tree of
humanity.

Our realism then only asserts the real historical connection of
each member of the race with its first father and head, and such a
derivation of each from him as makes us partakers of the character
which he formed. Adam was once the race; and when he fell, the
race fell. Shedd: “We all existed in Adam in our elementary
invisible substance. The _Seyn_ of all was there, though the
_Daseyn_ was not; the _noumenon_, though not the _phenomenon_, was
in existence.” On realism, see Koehler, Realismus und
Nominalismus; Neander, Ch. Hist., 4:356; Dorner, Person Christ,
2:377; Hase, Anselm, 2:77; F. E. Abbott, Scientific Theism,
Introd., 1-29, and in Mind, Oct. 1882:476, 477; Raymond, Theology,
2:30-33; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:69-74; Bowne, Theory of Thought
and Knowledge, 129-132; Ten Broeke, in Baptist Quar. Rev., Jan.
1892:1-26; Baldwin, Psychology, 280, 281; D. J. Hill, Genetic
Philosophy, 186; Hours with the Mystics, 1:213; Case, Physical
Realism, 17-19; Fullerton, Sameness and Identity, 88, 89, and
Concept of the Infinite, 95-114.

The new conceptions of the reign of law and of the principle of
heredity which prevail in modern science are working to the
advantage of Christian theology. The doctrine of Adam’s Natural
Headship is only a doctrine of the hereditary transmission of
character from the first father of the race to his descendants.
Hence we use the word “imputation” in its proper sense—that of a
reckoning or charging to us of that which is truly and properly
ours. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:259-357, esp. 328—“The
problem is: We must allow that the depravity, which all Adam’s
descendants inherit by natural generation, nevertheless involves
personal guilt; and yet this depravity, so far as it is natural,
wants the very conditions on which guilt depends. The only
satisfactory explanation of this difficulty is the Christian
doctrine of original sin. Here alone, if its inner possibility can
be maintained, can the apparently contradictory principles be
harmonized, viz.: the universal and deep-seated depravity of human
nature, as the source of actual sin, and individual responsibility
and guilt.” These words, though written by one who advocates a
different theory, are nevertheless a valuable argument in
corroboration of the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

Thornwell, Theology, 1:343—“We must contradict every Scripture
text and every Scripture doctrine which makes hereditary impurity
hateful to God and punishable in his sight, or we must maintain
that we sinned in Adam in his first transgression.” Secretan, in
his Work on Liberty, held to a _collective_ life of the race in
Adam. He was answered by Naville, Problem of Evil: “We existed in
Adam, not individually, but seminally. Each of us, as an
individual, is responsible only for his personal acts, or, to
speak more exactly, for the personal part of his acts. But each of
us, as he is man, is jointly and severally (_solidairement_)
responsible for the fall of the human race.” Bersier, The Oneness
of the Race, in its Fall and in its Future: “If we are commanded
to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is because our neighbor is
ourself.”

See Edwards, Original Sin, part 4, chap. 3; Shedd, on Original
Sin, in Discourses and Essays, 218-271, and references, 261-263,
also Dogm. Theol., 2:181-195; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 410-435,
451-460, 494; Schaff, in Bib. Sac., 5:220, and in Lange’s Com., on
Rom. 5:12; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 175-180; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 3:28-38, 204-236; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 1:269-400; Martensen, Dogmatics, 173-183; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 262 _sq._, _cf._ 101; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 135;
Bp. Reynolds, Sinfulness of Sin, in Works, 1:102-350; Mozley on
Original Sin, in Lectures, 136-152; Kendall, on Natural Heirship,
or All the World Akin, in Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1885:614-626.
_Per contra_, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:157-164, 227-257; Haven,
in Bib. Sac., 20:451-455; Criticism of Baird’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1880:335-376; of Schaff’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1870:239-262.

We regard this theory of the Natural Headship of Adam as the most satisfactory of the theories mentioned, and as furnishing the most important help towards the understanding of the great problem of original sin. In its favor may be urged the following considerations:

A. It puts the most natural interpretation upon Rom. 5:12-21. In verse 12 of this passage—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned”—the great majority of commentators regard the word “sinned” as describing a common transgression of the race in Adam. The death spoken of is, as the whole context shows, mainly though not exclusively physical. It has passed upon all—even upon those who have committed no conscious and personal transgression whereby to explain its infliction (verse 14). The legal phraseology of the passage shows that this infliction is not a matter of sovereign decree, but of judicial penalty (verses 13, 14, 15, 16, 18—“law,” “transgression,” “trespass,” “judgment ... of one unto condemnation,” “act of righteousness,” “justification”). As the explanation of this universal subjection to penalty, we are referred to Adam’s sin. By that one act (“so,” verse 12)—the “trespass of the one” man (v. 15, 17), the “one trespass” (v. 18)—death came to all men, because all [not “have sinned”, but] sinned (πάντες ἥμαρτον—aorist of instantaneous past action)—that is, all sinned in “the one trespass” of “the one” man. Compare 1 Cor. 15:22—“As in Adam all die”—where the contrast with physical resurrection shows that physical death is meant; 2 Cor. 5:14—“one died for all, therefore all died.” See Commentaries of Meyer, Bengel, Olshausen, Philippi, Wordsworth, Lange, Godet, Shedd. This is also recognized as the correct interpretation of Paul’s words by Beyschlag, Ritschl, and Pfleiderer, although no one of these three accepts Paul’s doctrine as authoritative.

Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:58-60—“To understand the apostle’s
view, we must follow the exposition of Bengel (which is favored
also by Meyer and Pfleiderer): ‘_Because they_—viz., in Adam—_all
have sinned_’; they all, namely, who were included in Adam
according to the O. T. view which sees the whole race to its
founder, acted in his action.” Ritschl: “Certainly Paul treated
the universal destiny of death as due to the sin of Adam.
Nevertheless it is not yet suited for a theological rule just for
the reason that the apostle has formed this idea;” in other words,
Paul’s teaching it does not make it binding upon our faith.
Philippi, Com. on Rom., 168—Interpret _Rom. 5:12_—“_one sinned for
all, therefore all sinned_,” by _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_one died for all,
therefore all died._” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:294—“_by the
trespass of the one the many died_,” “_by the trespass of the one,
death reigned __ through the one_,” “_through the one man’s
disobedience_”—all these phrases, and the phrases with respect to
salvation which correspond to them, indicate that the fallen race
and the redeemed race are each regarded as a multitude, a
totality. So οἱ πάντεσ in 2 Cor. 5:14 indicates a corresponding
conception of the organic unity of the race.

Prof. George B. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 32-40, 129-139, denies
that Paul taught the sinning of all men in Adam: “They sinned in
the same sense in which believers were crucified to the world and
died unto sin when Christ died upon the cross. The believer’s
renewal is conceived as wrought in advance by those acts and
experiences of Christ in which it has its ground. As the
consequences of his vicarious sufferings are traced back to their
cause, so are the consequences which flowed from the beginning of
sin in Adam traced back to that original fount of evil and
identified with it; but the latter statement should no more be
treated as a rigid logical formula than the former, its
counterpart.... There is a mystical identification of the
procuring cause with its effect,—both in the case of Adam and of
Christ.”

In our treatment of the New School theory of sin we have pointed
out that the inability to understand the vital union of the
believer with Christ incapacitates the New School theologian from
understanding the organic union of the race with Adam. Paul’s
phrase “_in Christ_” meant more than that Christ is the type and
beginner of salvation, and sinning in Adam meant more to Paul than
following the example or acting in the spirit of our first father.
In _2 Cor. 5:14_ the argument is that since Christ died, all
believers died to sin and death in him. Their resurrection-life is
the same life that died and rose again in his death and
resurrection. So Adam’s sin is ours because the same life which
transgressed and became corrupt in him has come down to us and is
our possession. In _Rom. 5:14_, the individual and conscious sins
to which the New School theory attaches the condemning sentence
are expressly excluded, and in _verses 15-19_ the judgment is
declared to be “_of one trespass_.” Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, of
Rochester, says well: “Paul teaches that Adam’s sin is ours, not
potentially, but actually.” Of ἥμαρτον, he says: “This might
conceivably be: (1) the historical aorist proper, used in its
momentary sense; (2) the comprehensive or collective aorist, as in
διῆλθεν in the same verse; (3) the aorist used in the sense of the
English perfect, as in _Rom. 3:23_—πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ
ὑστεροῦνται. In _5:12_, the context determines with great
probability that the aorist is used in the first of these senses.”
We may add that interpreters are not wanting who so take ἥμαρτον
in _3:23_; see also margin of Rev. Version. But since the passage
_Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we reserve to the close of this
section a treatment of it in greater detail.

B. It permits whatever of truth there may be in the Federal theory and in the theory of Mediate Imputation to be combined with it, while neither of these latter theories can be justified to reason unless they are regarded as corollaries or accessories of the truth of Adam’s Natural Headship. Only on this supposition of Natural Headship could God justly constitute Adam our representative, or hold us responsible for the depraved nature we have received from him. It moreover justifies God’s ways, in postulating a real and a fair probation of our common nature as preliminary to imputation of sin—a truth which the theories just mentioned, in common with that of the New School, virtually deny,—while it rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to will, ability, law, and accepts the Scriptural representations of the nature of sin, the penal character of death, the origin of the soul, and the oneness of the race in the transgression.

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196-232, favors the
view that sin consists simply in an inherited bias of our nature
to evil, and that we are guilty from birth because we are sinful
from birth. But he recognizes in Augustinianism the truth of the
organic unity of the race and the implication of every member in
its past history. He tells us that we must not regard man simply
as an abstract or isolated individual. The atomistic theory
regards society as having no existence other than that of the
individuals who compose it. But it is nearer the truth to say that
it is society which creates the individual, rather than that the
individual creates society. Man does not come into existence a
blank tablet on which external agencies may write whatever record
they will. The individual is steeped in influences which are due
to the past history of his kind. The individualistic theory runs
counter to the most obvious facts of observation and experience.
As a philosophy of life, Augustinianism has a depth and
significance which the individualistic theory cannot claim.

Alvah Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 175 (2d ed.)—“Every
child of Adam is accountable for the degree of sympathy which he
has for the whole system of evil in the world, and with the primal
act of disobedience among men. If that sympathy is full, whether
expressed by deed or thought, if the whole force of his being is
arrayed against heaven and on the side of hell, it is difficult to
limit his responsibility.” Schleiermacher held that the guilt of
original sin attached, not to the individual as an individual, but
as a member of the race, so that the consciousness of race-union
carried with it the consciousness of race-guilt. He held all men
to be equally sinful and to differ only in their different
reception of or attitude toward grace, sin being the universal
_malum metaphysicum_ of Spinoza; see Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit
Kant, 113.

C. While its fundamental presupposition—a determination of the will of each member of the race prior to his individual consciousness—is an hypothesis difficult in itself, it is an hypothesis which furnishes the key to many more difficulties than it suggests. Once allow that the race was one in its first ancestor and fell in him, and light is thrown on a problem otherwise insoluble—the problem of our accountability for a sinful nature which we have not personally and consciously originated. Since we cannot, with the three theories first mentioned, deny either of the terms of this problem—inborn depravity or accountability for it,—we accept this solution as the best attainable.

Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 20—“The whole swing of
the pendulum of thought of to-day is away from the individual and
towards the social point of view. Theories of society are
supplementing theories of the individual. The solidarity of man is
the regnant thought in both the scientific and the historical
study of man. It is even running into the extreme of a determinism
that annihilates the individual.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the
Present Age, 43—“It was never less possible to deny the truth to
which theology gives expression in its doctrine of original sin
than in the present age. It is only one form of the universally
recognized fact of heredity. There is a collective evil, for which
the responsibility rests on the whole race of man. Of this common
evil each man inherits his share; it is organized in his nature;
it is established in his environment.” E. G. Robinson: “The
tendency of modern theology [in the last generation] was to
individualization, to make each man ‘a little Almighty.’ But the
human race is one in kind, and in a sense is numerically one. The
race lay potentially in Adam. The entire developing force of the
race was in him. There is no carrying the race up, except from the
starting-point of a fallen and guilty humanity.” Goethe said that
while humanity ever advances, individual man remains the same.

The true test of a theory is, not that it can itself be explained,
but that it is capable of explaining. The atomic theory in
chemistry, the theory of the ether in physics, the theory of
gravitation, the theory of evolution, are all in themselves
indemonstrable hypotheses, provisionally accepted simply because,
if granted, they unify great aggregations of facts. Coleridge said
that original sin is the one mystery that makes all other things
clear. In this mystery, however, there is nothing
self-contradictory or arbitrary. Gladden, What is Left?
131—“Heredity is God working in us, and environment is God working
around us.” Whether we adopt the theory of Augustine or not, the
facts of universal moral obliquity and universal human suffering
confront us. We are compelled to reconcile these facts with our
faith in the righteousness and goodness of God. Augustine gives us
a unifying principle which, better than any other, explains these
facts and justifies them. On the solidarity of the race, see
Bruce, The Providential Order, 280-310, and art. on Sin, by
Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.

D. This theory finds support in the conclusions of modern science: with regard to the moral law, as requiring right states as well as right acts; with regard to the human will, as including subconscious and unconscious bent and determination; with regard to heredity, and the transmission of evil character; with regard to the unity and solidarity of the human race. The Augustinian theory may therefore be called an ethical or theological interpretation of certain incontestable and acknowledged biological facts.

Ribot, Heredity, 1—“Heredity is that biological law by which all
beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their
descendants; it is for the species what personal identity is for
the individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid
incessant variations. By it nature ever copies and imitates
herself.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 202-218—“In man’s
moral condition we find arrested development; reversion to a
savage type; hypocritical and self-protective mimicry of virtue;
parasitism; physical and moral abnormality; deep-seated perversion
of faculty.” Simon, Reconciliation, 154 sq.—“The organism was
affected before the individuals which are its successive
differentiations and products were affected.... Humanity as an
organism received an injury from sin. It received that injury at
the very beginning.... At the moment when the seed began to
germinate disease entered and it was smitten with death on account
of sin.”

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 134—“A general notion has
no actual or possible metaphysical existence. All real existence
is necessarily singular and individual. The only way to give the
notion any metaphysical significance is to turn it into a law
inherent in reality, and this attempt will fail unless we finally
conceive this law as a rule according to which a basal
intelligence proceeds in positing individuals.” Sheldon, in the
Methodist Review, March, 1901:214-227, applies this explanation to
the doctrine of original sin. Men have a common nature, he says,
only in the sense that they are resembling personalities. If we
literally died in Adam, we also literally died in Christ. There is
no all-inclusive Christ, any more than there is an all-inclusive
Adam. We regard this argument as proving the precise opposite of
its intended conclusion. There is an all-inclusive Christ, and the
fundamental error of most of those who oppose Augustinianism is
that they misconceive the union of the believer with Christ. “A
basal intelligence” here “posits individuals.” And so with the
relation of men to Adam. Here too there is “a law inherent in
reality”—the regular working of the divine will, according to
which like produces like, and a sinful germ reproduces itself.

E. We are to remember, however, that while this theory of the method of our union with Adam is merely a valuable hypothesis, the problem which it seeks to explain is, in both its terms, presented to us both by conscience and by Scripture. In connection with this problem a central fact is announced in Scripture, which we feel compelled to believe upon divine testimony, even though every attempted explanation should prove unsatisfactory. That central fact, which constitutes the substance of the Scripture doctrine of original sin, is simply this: that the sin of Adam is the immediate cause and ground of inborn depravity, guilt and condemnation to the whole human race.

Three things must be received on Scripture testimony: (1) inborn
depravity; (2) guilt and condemnation therefor; (3) Adam’s sin the
cause and ground of both. From these three positions of Scripture
it seems not only natural, but inevitable, to draw the inference
that we “_all sinned_” in Adam. The Augustinian theory simply puts
in a link of connection between two sets of facts which otherwise
would be difficult to reconcile. But, in putting in that link of
connection, it claims that it is merely bringing out into clear
light an underlying but implicit assumption of Paul’s reasoning,
and this it seeks to prove by showing that upon no other
assumption can Paul’s reasoning be understood at all. Since the
passage in _Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we proceed to examine
it in greater detail. Our treatment is mainly a reproduction of
the substance of Shedd’s Commentary, although we have combined
with it remarks from Meyer, Schaff, Moule, and others.

_Exposition of Rom. 5:12-19._—_Parallel between the salvation in
Christ and the ruin that has come through Adam_, in each case
through no personal act of our own, neither by our earning
salvation in the case of the life received through Christ, nor by
our individually sinning in the case of the death received through
Adam. The statement of the parallel is begun in

_Verse 12_: “_as through one man sin entered into the world, and
death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all
sinned,_” so (as we may complete the interrupted sentence) by one
man righteousness entered into the world, and life by
righteousness, and so life passed upon all men, because all became
partakers of this righteousness. Both physical and spiritual death
is meant. That it is physical is shown (1) from _verse 14_; (2)
from the allusion to _Gen. 3:19_; (3) from the universal Jewish
and Christian assumption that physical death was the result of
Adam’s sin. See Wisdom 2:23, 24; Sirach 25:24; 2 Esdras 3:7, 21;
7:11, 46, 48, 118; 9:19; _John 8:44_; _1 Cor. 15:21_. That it is
spiritual, is evident from _Rom. 5:18, 21_, where ζωή is the
opposite of θάνατος, and from _2 Tim. 1:10_, where the same
contrast occurs. The οὔτος in _verse 12_ shows the mode in which
historically death has come to all, namely, that the _one_ sinned,
and thereby brought death to all; in other words, death is the
effect, of which the sin of the one is the cause. By Adam’s act,
physical and spiritual death passed upon all men, because all
sinned. ἐφ᾽ ᾦ = because, on the ground of the fact that, for the
reason that, all sinned. πάντες = all, without exception, infants
included, as _verse 14_ teaches.

Ἥμαρτον mentions the particular reason why all men died, _viz._,
because all men sinned. It is the aorist of momentary past
action—sinned when, through the one, sin entered into the world.
It is as much as to say, “because, when Adam sinned, all men
sinned in and with him.” This is proved by the succeeding
explanatory context (_verses 15-19_), in which it is reiterated
five times in succession that one and only one sin is the cause of
the death that befalls all men. Compare _1 Cor. 15:22_. The senses
“all were sinful,” “all became sinful,” are inadmissible, for
ἁμαρτάνειν is not ἁμαρτωλὸν γίγνεσθαι or εἶναι. The sense “death
passed upon all men, because all have consciously and personally
sinned,” is contradicted (1) by _verse 14_, in which it is
asserted that certain persons who are a part of πάντες, the
subject of ἥμαρτον, and who suffer the death which is the penalty
of sin, did not commit sins resembling Adam’s first sin, _i. e._,
individual and conscious transgressions; and (2) by _verses
15-19_, in which it is asserted repeatedly that only one sin, and
not millions of transgressions, is the cause of the death of all
men. This sense would seem to require ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν.
Neither can ἥμαρτον have the sense “were accounted and treated as
sinners”; for (1) there is no other instance in Scripture where
this active verb has a passive signification; and (2) the passive
makes ἥμαρτον to denote God’s action, and not man’s. This would
not furnish the justification of the infliction of death, which
Paul is seeking,

_Verse 13_ begins a demonstration of the proposition, in _Verse
12_, that death comes to all, because all men sinned the one sin
of the one man. The argument is as follows: Before the law sin
existed; for there was death, the penalty of sin. But this sin was
not sin committed against the _Mosaic_ law, because that law was
not yet in existence. The death in the world prior to that law
proves that there must have been some other law, against which sin
had been committed.

_Verse 14_. Nor could it have been personal and conscious
violation of an _unwritten_ law, for which death was inflicted;
for death passed upon multitudes, such as infants and idiots, who
did not sin in their own persons, as Adam did, by violating some
known commandment. Infants are not specifically named here,
because the intention is to include others who, though mature in
years, have not reached moral consciousness. But since death is
everywhere and always the penalty of sin, the death of all must
have been the penalty of the common sin of the race, when πάντες
ἥμαρτον in Adam. The law which they violated was the Eden statute,
_Gen. 2:17_. The relation between their sin and Adam’s is not that
of _resemblance_, but of _identity_. Had the sin by which death
came upon them been one _like_ Adam’s, there would have been as
many sins, to be the cause of death and to account for it, as
there were individuals. Death would have come into the world
through millions of men, and not “_through one man_” (_verse 12_),
and judgment would have come upon all men to condemnation through
millions of trespasses, and not “_through one trespass_” (_v.
18_). The object, then, of the parenthetical digression in _verses
13_ and _14_ is to prevent the reader from supposing, from the
statement that “all men sinned,” that the individual
transgressions of all men are meant, and to make it clear that
only the one first sin of the one first man is intended. Those who
died before Moses must have violated some law. The Mosaic law, and
the law of conscience, have been ruled out of the case. These
persons must, therefore, have sinned against the commandment in
Eden, the probationary statute; and their sin was not _similar_
(ὁμοίος) to Adam’s, but Adam’s _identical_ sin, the very same sin
numerically of the “_one man_.” They did not, in their own persons
and consciously, sin as Adam did; yet in Adam, and in the nature
common to him and them, they sinned and fell (_versus_ Current
Discussions in Theology, 5:277, 278). They did not sin _like_
Adam, but they “sinned _in_ him, and fell _with_ him, in that
first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism, 22).

_Verses 15-17_ show how the work of grace differs from, and
surpasses, the work of sin. Over against God’s exact justice in
punishing all for the first sin which all committed in Adam, is
set the gratuitous justification of all who are in Christ. Adam’s
sin is the act of Adam and his posterity together; hence the
imputation to the posterity is just, and merited. Christ’s
obedience is the work of Christ alone; hence the imputation of it
to the elect is gracious and unmerited. Here τοὺς πολλούς is not
of equal extent with οἱ πολλοί in the first clause, because other
passages teach that “the many” who die in Adam are not
conterminous with “_the many_” who live in Christ; see _1 Cor.
15:22_; _Mat. 25:46_; also, see note on _verse 18_, below. Τοὺς
πολλούς here refers to the same persons who, in _verse 17_, are
said to “_receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.” _Verse 16_ notices a numerical difference between
the condemnation and the justification. Condemnation results from
_one_ offense; justification delivers from _many_ offences. _Verse
17_ enforces and explains _verse 16_. If the union with Adam in
his sin was certain to bring destruction, the union with Christ in
his righteousness is yet more certain to bring salvation.

_Verse 18_ resumes the parallel between Adam and Christ which was
commenced in _verse 12_, but was interrupted by the explanatory
parenthesis in _verses 13-17_. “_As through one trespass ... unto
all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness
... unto all men unto justification of_ [necessary to] _life_.”
Here the “_all men to condemnation_”—the οἱ πολλοί in _verse 15_;
and the “_all men unto justification of life_”—the τοὺς πολλούς in
_verse 15_. There is a totality in each case; but, in the former
case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their physical life from
Adam,—in the latter case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their
spiritual life from Christ (compare _1 Cor. 15:22_—“_For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”—in which
last clause Paul is speaking, as the context shows, not of the
resurrection of all men, both saints and sinners, but only of the
blessed resurrection of the righteous; in other words, of the
resurrection of those who are one with Christ).

_Verse 19._ “_For as through the one man’s disobedience the many
were constituted sinners, even so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be constituted righteous._” The many were
constituted sinners because, according to _verse 12_, they sinned
in and with Adam in his fall. The verb presupposes the fact of
natural union between those to whom it relates. All men are
declared to be sinners on the ground of that “_one trespass_,”
because, when that one trespass was committed, all men were one
man—that is, were one common nature in the first human pair. Sin
is imputed, because it is committed. All men are punished with
death, because they literally sinned in Adam, and not because they
are metaphorically reputed to have done so, but in fact did not.
Οἱ πολλοί is used in contrast with the one forefather, and the
atonement of Christ is designated as ὑπακοή, in order to contrast
it with the παρακοή of Adam.

Κατασταθήσονται has the same signification as in the first part of
the verse. Δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται means simply “shall be
justified,” and is used instead of δικαιωθήσονται, in order to
make the antithesis of ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν more perfect. This
being “_constituted righteous_” presupposes the fact of a union
between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between Christ and
believers, just as the being “_constituted sinners_” presupposed
the fact of a union between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between
all men and Adam. The future κατασταθήσονται refers to the
succession of believers; the _justification_ of all was, ideally,
complete already, but actually, it would await the times of
individual believing. “_The many_” who shall be “_constituted
righteous_”—not all mankind, but only “_the many_” to whom, in
_verse 15_, grace abounded, and who are described, in _verse 17_,
as “_they that receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.”