100. I. Generic Oneness Of The Race.

I. Generic Oneness Of The Race.

1. A Generic Human Nature.—The theory, in this view of it, has received no more definite statement than at the hand of Dr. Shedd. After citations from Augustine, as containing his own view, he proceeds: “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 this theory was afterward expressed in the scholastic dictum, ‘natura corrumpit personam’—human natureapostatizes—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.”^{[498] [498]} History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii, pp. 77, 78. The doctrine is constructed upon the principle of the scholastic realism, according to which genera are objective realities, essential existences in distinction from the individuals which represent them. There are two forms of the doctrine respecting the relation of individuals to the generic nature. In the one view, individuals have no separate being in themselves, but are mere modes and manifestations of the generic nature. It is thus one in principle with the pantheism which reduces all things to mere modes of the one being. In the other view each individual has the essence of existence in itself, but that essence was previously in the generic nature, and is derived from it in a process of individuation whereby individuals receive their separate existence. Thus in the instance of any species or genus the total being of all the generations existed in the prior generic nature. The first oak contained the essence of all its generations; the first pair of lions contained the essential being of ail their progeny down to the present hour; the first man contained in himself the essence, material and spiritual, of all human generations. Thus the divine creations gave instant existence to genera and species, not in their serial forms, but in the sense of the whole nature out of which all individuals are produced. It should be specially noted that the prior existence of individuals in the generic nature is without any individuality even in its most rudimentary form. The generic nature is in itself a single, simple essence. It follows that the production of individuals out of such a nature, with separate and essential existence in themselves, requires in each instance the abscission or outgoing of so much of its substance as will constitute the separate existence. In the case of man, with a dichotomic view of his natures, there must be the separation of so much of the generic essence in the production of each person as will constitute the material and spiritual essence of his being. This is the doctrine maintained in the higher realism of the Augustinian anthropology. The other form which, as previously stated, reduces all individuals to mere modes of the one substance, and consequently allows them only a phenomenal existence, could not be brought into harmony with this anthropology. Its deepest tenets require the deepest reality of individual existence in every human person. Each man as a responsible person must possess in himself the reality of individual existence. Each man’s consciousness absolutely affirms such an existence. Therefore the theory of a mere phenomenal existence can have no proper place in Christian anthropology. It allows no distinctively spiritual nature in man. In assuming a merely modal or phenomenal existence of individual men, it must assume a purely unitary substance as the common ground of all human personalities. This is too senseless for any acceptance in rational thought. It is the other form of realism, according to which the generic nature divides itself and distributes a portion to every individual of the race, that is appropriated in the Augustinian anthropology.^[499] Thus each individual has his own essential being, separate and distinct from every other. The theory is constrained to qualify the generic nature, especially on its physical side. It could not be thought that the substance of all human bodies in its phenomenal and bulk form existed in the body of Adam. In this exigency the theory seizes upon the most restricted sense of substance, dismisses all visible qualities of matter, and holds as remaining only the invisible and metaphysical essence of its being.

^[499]Shedd:Dogmatic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 63-65, 72-74, 78-80.

2. The Generic Nature Rational and Voluntary.—The generic human nature, considered in its purely metaphysical sense, could not commit the primitive sin. By a process of abstraction we may separate the substance of matter from its properties, but all that remains exists only in the abstraction of thought. There is no such matter in reality. If there were, it could fulfill no function of matter. This is Possible only with its properties. So, for the agent in the primitive sin we cannot stop with any abstract sense of mind. There must be the possession of personal faculties, as necessary to any moral action. Accordingly, the generic human nature is promptly invested with such faculties. “But this human nature, it must be carefully noticed, possesses all the attributes of the human individual; for the individual is only a portion and specimen of the nature. Considered as an essence, human nature is an intelligent, rational, and voluntary essence; and accordingly its agency in Adam partakes of the corresponding qualities.”^{[500] [500]} Shedd:History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii, p. 78.

3. Adam the Generic Nature.—This higher realism often proceeds in a manner to suggest the existence of the generic human nature prior to Adam himself. In this view he must be accounted simply as its first individualized specimen or part in the historic development of the species. In accordance with this view there is in the citation given just above a characterization of the agency of this nature in Adam. The Scriptures, however, so connect the moral state of the race with the sin of Adam that this realistic theory cannot dispose of him simply as an individualized form of the generic nature, with the only distinction from other individualized forms that he was the first. The only alternative is to account Adam the generic human nature, and the race as individualized portions of himself. This is the view taken: “Adam, as the generic man, was not a mere receptacle containing millions of separate individuals. The genus is not an aggregation, but a single, simple essence. As such, it is not yet characterized by individuality. It, however, becomes varied and manifold by being individualized in its propagation, or development into a series. . . . The individual, as such, is consequently only a subsequent modus existendi, the first and antecedent mode being the generic humanity, of which this subsequent serial mode is only another aspect or manifestation.”^[501] In a similar view, Baird holds that the creation of Adam was the creation of the human species.^[502] Theoretically, this view most thoroughly identifies the race in a real oneness with Adam.

^[501]Shedd:Theological Essays, p. 352.

^[502]The Elohim Revealed, p. 133.

4. The Agent in the Primitive Sin.—The theory is obvious and easily stated at this point. The leading facts are the same, whether the race is located in Adam or in a generic nature back of him. There must in either case be the same endowment of personal qualities. The generic nature, possessing all the necessary faculties of personal agency, was capable of moral action, and in the use of such powers did most responsibly commit the primitive sin. It so committed this sin while yet containing in itself, or, rather, being in itself, the whole substance of the human race. This is the doctrine maintained.

5. All Men a Part in the Sinning.—A common participation in the primitive sin is maintained on the ground that all men existed in Adam when he committed that sin. We have previously seen the mode of that existence, as maintained in this higher realism. It was not in a mere germinal or seminal mode, as embodied in a lower form of realism—a form to be separately considered. A merely germinal or seminal existence in Adam lacks the identity with his very being which is necessary to a responsible part in his sinning. The essential being of the whole race then existed in Adam, and without any individuality even in the most rudimentary sense. Our separate personal existence is by the abscission and individualization of so much of his very being as constitutes the essential existence of each one of the race. As so existing in Adam, we participated in the primitive sin. Indeed, it may as truly be said that we committed that sin as that Adam himself committed it. This is the theory. This doctrine is maintained with much elaboration and asserted with frequent repetition. A few citations may suffice where many are possible. “Adam differed from all other human individuals by containing within his person the entire human nature out of which the millions of generations were to be propagated, and of which they are individualized portions. He was to transmit this human nature which was all in himself, exactly as it had been created in him; for propagation makes no radical changes, but simply transmits what is given in the nature, be it good or bad.”^[503] The consequences are then drawn upon the supposition of obedience or sin in Adam. In the former case the result would have been the perfect holiness of every individual of the race. In the actual case of sin there necessarily follows the sinfulness of every man as an individualized portion of the generic nature which sinned in Adam. “The individuals produced out of it must be characterized by a sinful state and condition.”

^[503]Shedd:History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii, p. 118.

“The aim of the Westminster symbol accordingly, and, it may be added, of all the creeds on the Augustinian side of the controversy, was to combine two elements, each having truth in it—to teach the fall of the human race as a unity, and, at the same time, recognize the existence, freedom, and guilt of the individual in the fall. Accordingly, they locate the individual in Adam, and make him, in some mysterious but real manner, a responsible partaker in Adam’s sin—a guilty sharer, and, in some solid sense of the word, co-agent in a common apostasy.”^[504] Whether the more prevalent Calvinistic view accords with this passage is a question in which Calvinists themselves are far more concerned than others. It forcibly expresses the realistic ground of a common participation in the sin of Adam. “The total guilt of the first sin, thus committed by the entire race in Adam, is imputed to each individual of the race, because of theindivisibility of guilt. . . . For though the one common nature that committed the ‘one offense’ is divisible by propagation, the offense itself is not divisible, nor is the guilt of it. Consequently, one man is as guilty as another of the whole first sin—of the original act of falling from God. The individual Adam and Eve were no more guilty of this first act, and of the whole of it, than their descendants are; and their descendants are as guilty as they.”^[505] We have sufficiently stated the realistic ground of a common participation in the sin of Adam. We have seen in the last citation the measure of the common guilt. Each individual of the race is held to be as guilty as Adam himself. This is one of the leading modes in which the Augustinian anthropology maintains the consistency of a common native sinfulness with the divine justice and goodness.

^[504]Shedd:Theological Essays, pp. 252, 253.

^[505]Shedd:Dogmatic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 185, 186.