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ence of Adam." Which, since we are made righteous by the imputation of Christ's righteousness without being really personally righteous, must mean that we are treated as personally unrighteous without being really so; i. e., by simply, and contrary to the truth or fact, putting unrighteousness to our account and holding us, though innocent, as guilty.

Concerning this doctrine of immediate imputation on these different bases, our reply must be: (a) As to its basis in a legal covenant headship of Adam. First, such covenant is something in clear excess of Scripture teaching. There is no mention of any such thing in connection with Adam's probation. Secondly, the explanation really contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam's sin to be God's regarding and treating the race as sinners, whereas the Scriptures distinctly declare that Adam's offense constituted men sinners (Rom. v. 19). We are not sinners because God, on the basis of a covenant, merely arranges to treat us as such, but we are treated as sinners because we are sinners (Rom. v. 12). (b) As to the realistic basis: First, the exegesis of Rom. v. 12, as "in whom all sinned," used as Scripture support for it, is quite untenable. Jerome's translation was a mistake and misleading. Secondly, the assumed actual existence in Adam of all the subsequent human personalities, in such a sense as to make them veritable personal participants in his choice and co-agents in his act, presents an abstraction, a mental fiction, confounding the conceptual existence of the race with the real existence of its personalities. Only the possibility of

1 II., 113.

2

* Lechler, " Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times," I., pp. 357-359; Miller, "XXXIX Articles," p. 37.

other men after Adam and Eve was "in him," not their actuality. In the Biblical order the creation of two personal individual human beings was the prius to the creation of any others of their rank through the mode of race propagation. We must not juggle with the abstract term "humanity" at this point. Thirdly, to make Adam not an individual personal being, but the aggregate "unindividualized" humanity, destroys his character as real and true man and his capacity to act as a really personal agent and representative. Dr. C. A. Stork has well said: "If he was a collective being he was not a man at all." Of human personality without individuality we know nothing, and if Adam was not a true individual human being, how could he be the natural progenitor of the real personalities of the race? The offered explanation is an illusion.

(b) Mediate imputation, as a theoretic explanation, was first advanced by Placaeus (1606-1655), professor of theology at Saumur, France. It teaches that the sin and guilt of Adam's transgression are imputed, not directly, but only through and on account of the actual corruption or sinfulness resulting to all men from his sin. Quenstedt puts this: "For no one is considered a sinner by God, to no one is the first act imputed, except to him who descends, contaminated with original sin, from that same Adam."1

The distinction between these two views of imputation becomes clearer, if we note that immediate imputation is often called "antecedent "-making all men responsible for Adam's sin as participants in actu or by representative, condemning independently of and prior to natural depravity, hereditary guilt preceding, in logical order, 'Schmid, "Doctrinal Theology,” p. 248.

hereditary sin. Mediate imputation is termed consequent, as following upon the inherited corruption and its condemning guiltiness. The sin of the apostasy is ours, not because God imputes it to us, but it is truly and properly ours, and, therefore, God imputes it to us.

This theory of mediate imputation accords with the language and general spirit of the Holy Scriptures, and violates, per se, no principle of reason. In it the word imputation means simply " to hold responsible for," viz. : to place the guilt and penalties to men's account because the sin or sinfulness is really theirs. They are "condemned," and under "death" spiritual, because they are corrupted and polluted with sin. This view resolves itself substantially into the doctrine confessed by the Church before the rise of these theories. "Calvin and all the first reformers and creeds were principally concerned in emphasizing the fact that original sin inherent, as distinguished from original sin imputed, is intrinsically and justly, as moral corruption, worthy of God's wrath and curse." 1

On the other hand, this theory fails to solve what the theory of immediate imputation was invented to explain, viz. on what ground and order of racial propagation of moral depravity from parent to children was there incorporated in the system of human life, or on what basis is the whole race punished with, this corruption of nature? For, original sin seems to come as a penalty on Adam's actual sin, the penalty covering not only the actual offenders, but all their posterity. And the question at bottom is, by what right is this inflicted on all the race? The extremest defenders of immediate imputation admit that all the other elements of evil than inherited

1 Dr. A. A. Hodge, "Outlines of Theology," p. 357.

sin itself, such as disease, suffering, temporal and eternal death, come on us because of this inherent sin and our actual sins. But why is inherent sin itself ours? Mediate imputation is the sufficient explanation of all but the descent of depravity to Adam's posterity. We are entitled to take this theory as far as it reaches with its explanation, viz.: the truth that original sin is sin and is under condemnation. This remaining problem, which seeks the ground on which God has constituted human life with the principle of hereditary descent as carrying a self-induced corruption, must be explained, if explained at all, on some other theory. The theory of immediate imputation, invoked to solve it, is worse than a simple failure. It brings in more difficulties than it clears away-in an alleged arbitrary covenant arrangement without warrant of Scripture or reason, or in taking the abstract term "humanity" realistically, as identical with the concrete personal being Adam, and viewing him as the undivided, undistributed, unindividualized human substance, thus destroying his real personality and substituting an undifferentiated mass of potential, but yet impersonal, human nature.

Without doubt, the right thing for us to do is to recognize original sin, as taught in the Scriptures, in its form of fact in the natural and revealed constitution of the world, accepting, as we are warranted in doing, the theory of mediate imputation, as in its measure explanatory of truth. Thus, taking Adam as an individual, the first man and natural head and root of the race, both physically and spiritually, we recognize, as the Christian revelation affirms and the actual state of the world has always shown, that his offspring have inherited his fallen and corrupt nature. We can afford to leave the

explanation of it with the rest of the aggregate mystery of which it forms a part-the mystery of sin in the world. In this way we accept all that revelation and the Church's confessions declare, and avoid making explanations which do not explain, and to which we can find no response in conscience or reason. There are three points on which we may be sure, and with which we may well feel satisfied: First, that God is not the author of sin. Its very essence is antagonism to His will. It has come from abuse of creature free-agency, and continues in its abuse. Secondly, that the relation of the human race to its head in Adam, by which his sinful condition descends to his posterity, could we see and fully understand it all, would be found to involve nothing in violation of either God's goodness or justice. Thirdly, that God takes no pleasure in the corruption and misery which sin brings, as is clear from the perpetual assurances of His word and the provision and appeal of the redemptive administration He has established in the Gospel.

(c) There is, however, a still further point in the doctrine of original sin which here claims careful consideration, if we wish to understand it under the fullest light of the Gospel teaching. This light fully justifies the Church's confessions in holding this natural depravity as "truly sin" and as involving "guilt” and drawing "condemnation." No concessions can be made to denials of inborn sinfulness or the ill-desert of its innate alienation or aversion from God and righteousness. Nevertheless, the orthodox theology of the Church has always and everywhere recognized a distinction and real difference between this so-called "original sin" and "actual sin." The difference is clear and important.

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