ARTICLE VIII.-ORIGINAL SIN: THE STATE OF THE QUESTION.

The Southern Presbyterian Review for April, 1850.

Dr.

Baird's Elohim Revealed. A Review by the Rev. J. THORNWELL, D. D.

The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review. April, 1860. Article V. The First and Second Adam; a Review of Dr. Baird's Elohim Revealed.

Ir has been a received and largely prevailing view in the Christian Church, that the descendants of Adam, at the beginning of their existence in this world, and before the exercise of personal agency, are ill-deserving. It has always been felt that, considering the nature of sin and responsibility, this fact presents a difficult problem for solution. In respect to everything congenital, are not men passive and involuntary? How, then, can they be culpable? If they have sin in them at birth, how shall the inference be avoided that God is the author of it?

We design, in the briefest manner possible, to describe the various opinions entertained on this subject, in order to exhibit to our readers the present state of the discussion. They who assume the fact of innate guilt, in the strict sense of the term, involving ill-desert, are divided as follows:

1. Those who adopt the theory of individual preëxistence. The ancient representative of this doctrine was Origen, who held that every soul fell from rectitude by an act of free-will, in an earlier state of existence; that Adam and all his posterity are incarnate souls who thus come into this world, tainted with guilt. This view is advocated by Dr. Edward Beecher, in "The Conflict of Ages." In a modified form it is held by Dr. Julius Müller, who in his work on the Doctrine of Sin— perhaps the most learned and thorough treatise upon the general subject that has ever been written-defends the notion of a "timeless" preëxistence of the individual, prior (if we may use a word that expresses time, where the relation of time is dropped

The theory of preëxist

out) to his present consciousness. ence, if it could be established and shown to be consistent with the Scriptures, would of course remove the difficulty, as all sin would be connected with the sinner's personal agency. We remark in passing, that the aim and point of Dr. Beecher's work have been generally overlooked by the critics, who have charged him with simply removing the difficulty a step further back and leaving the introduction of sin as great a mystery as it was before. It was not his purpose to account for the permission of sin or its non-prevention on the part of God, but to show the consistency of inborn ill-desert with the principles of justice and the proper conception of sin. The hypothesis which he advances, provided it be allowed as a fact, fully accomplishes this end.

The view presented by Coleridge, in the noted chapter of his Aids to Reflection, does not differ materially, as far as we see, from that of Müller. At the beginning of his conscious life here, the will of every individual is found determined to the inferior good. This evil direction of the will is the same in all men. It is the common principle underneath tendencies to particular sins, and varying forms of sinful action. It is that fact which we assert of every individual, not because he has been guilty of this or that definite crime, or has this or that bad trait, but because he is a man. Hence it is called original sin. It is an evil, the commencement of which no individual can refer to any particular time. Nay, in reference to this subject, the relations of time are alien or heterogeneous, as the attributes and relations of space are to the affections. This evil disposition being moral, must originate in an act of self-determination, an act, however, known only through its consequences and implied in the condition of the soul onward from the time when the soul comes under the eye of consciousness. This sin is a consequence of Adam's fall, in the sense that it is "a link in the chain of historic instances, whereof Adam is the first;" a consequence, as our birth is owing to his existence. He being the first in time, "is taken as the diagram." No other connection of this transcendental act with the sin of Adam, does Coleridge admit, and the point is one on which he is not very explicit.

2. Those who adopt the doctrine of an inherited corruption of character which is culpable, while denying that the descendants of Adam are responsible, or accounted guilty, for his transgression. This opinion does not solve the problem which we have indicated above, but presupposes the possibility of illdesert where there is no kind of participation, whether real or constructive, in the actions that occasion it. It rests on the assumption that moral evil, like physical evil, is hereditary. This view has not been held very extensively, nor has it been defended in a very systematic or satisfactory manner. It was brought forward in the 17th century by the French theologian, Joshua Placæus, was vigorously disputed, and is condemned in the Xth and XIth paragraphs of the Formula Consensus Helvetica, where the ordinary Calvinistic doctrine of immediate imputation is asserted in opposition to it. A view substantially similar to that of Placæus is espoused by that part of the New England theologians who are denominated Old School, including the late Professors Tyler and Woods. Discarding the doctrine of a native ill-desert based on a covenant with Adam, as well as the doctrine of a real participation in his transgression, they nevertheless hold that men derive from him a wicked nature. There are passages in the writings of Dr. Dwight which seem to inculcate this doctrine of propagated sin, though other passages appear to be irreconcilable with such a view.

3. Those who believe that the posterity of Adanı committed transgression in him and with him, so that their inborn illdesert is properly and truly for their own act. This view is an offshoot from philosophical Realism, which regards human nature as a unit, and as identical in all the individuals of the race. The act of Adam, according to the Realistic view, being the common act of the race, belongs alike to all its members, as soon as they become possessed of personal being. This is the original doctrine of original sin, by which it was sought to reconcile hereditary guilt with the conception of sin as the free act of the sinner's will, and at the same time to put aside the blasphemous notion that God creates moral evil. Augustin first explicitly stated and maintained the Realistic

hypothesis, in which he was followed by the theology of the Middle Ages and of the Reformation.

The Roman Catholic Church, whenever it has departed from this view, has inclined to a modified Pelagianism. The Realistic hypothesis, in its clear and simple form, independent of the theory of the covenant with Adam, by which that view was first supplemented, and then supplanted, has been defended by Professor Shedd of Andover, and also in the recent work of Dr. Baird, entitled "Elohim Revealed."

4. Those who hold to the imputation of the first sin, on the ground of a covenant by which Adam was constituted the fed. eral head of the race, it being stipulated that in case he transgressed the law, his posterity should be regarded and treated as culpable from the start, although in his disobedience they had actually no part. According to this form of the doctrine of Imputation, as it is expounded by Dr. Thornwell and other authorities, men are born ill-deserving--we use this epithet on account of the possible ambiguity of the word guilty--in consequence of the covenant which provided that, in case a given event occurred in which they could have no real agency whatever, they should be thus born. They not only suffer by reason of Adam's sin, but they deserve to suffer, being objects of the Divine displeasure. The withdrawal of the fellowship of God, which leaves men under the dominion of sin, is a part of the penalty of the transgression which is, in the sense explained, imputed to them. The Realistic hypothesis is expressly rejected; the notion of inherited sin, founded in the mere connection of parent and child, is likewise denied, and native ill-desert is derived in the first instance solely from the covenant. The propriety and reasonableness of the Covenant are made to rest, indeed, upon the fact of our being descended from Adam, but this fact by itself is admitted to furnish no valid reason for charging his moral actions upon his posterity. This view may not inaptly be named Lockian

or nominalistic Calvinism. It is the doctrine of the Princeton divines, and has often been defended on the pages of their Review.

The precise time when it was first broached, our reading does not enable us to fix; but the doctrine forms no part of the ancient Augustinian theology, and even after the conception of a federal headship in Adam obtained currency among the theologians of the seventeenth century, who followed the scheme of Cocceius, the stress was laid, in vindicating the divine justice, upon the natural headship of the progenitor of the race, and our numerical identity with him. When pressed by objections, theologians fell back upon their Realism. This is true of Owen, whose authority, we believe, is unquestioned at Princeton. In his "Display of Arminianism," he makes us chargeable with Adam's transgression, because it was our crime committed in him, and formally distinguishes between the imputation of Adam's sin and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Righteousness, which is a blessing, can be imputed to us, he affirms, without our own act, but sin cannot. Of this Augustinian type of Calvinism, President Edwards was also an adherent. We have never thought it quite ingenuous for the Princeton writers to claim an identity of theological sentiment with divines like Owen, and with the great reformers and ancient teachers of the church, when there is, in truth, so wide and radical a discrepance.

To exhibit this diversity, we have only need to place a sentence from the Princeton Article upon Dr. Baird side by side with a sentence from Edwards: "It [Adam's sin] is imputed to them, [his posterity,] not because it was antecedently to that imputation, and irrespective of the covenant on which the imputation is founded, already theirs; but because they were appointed to stand their probation in him." So says the Princeton reviewer. But President Edwards takes just the opposite view. In connection with the statement that "the species acted in Adam” he remarks: "The sin of the apostasy is not theirs [i. e. ours] merely because God imputes it to them. But it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them."

Realism may be false, but the theologians who built their scheme upon it, adopted a doctrine in respect to the necessary conditions of responsibility, which the modern divines, to