106. II. Alleged Proofs Of The Theory.

II. Alleged Proofs Of The Theory. The representative theory, just as every other, is dependent upon its proofs. Hence their importance rises with its prominence in the Augustinian anthropology. Naturally, therefore, all facts and principles which promise any support are called into service and presented with the utmost exegetical and logical skill. We readily concede a strong plausibility to some of the arguments. Some have so much apparent strength that the answer is not always easy. We shall not attempt so elaborate a review as these statements might suggest or seem to require, and yet shall proceed with the confidence of showing that the arguments are inconclusive.

1. Responsibility on the Ground of Representation.—This, argument requires both the federal headship of Adam and the sufficiency of such representation for the common participation in the guilt of his sin. For the present, we proceed without questioning the federal headship as maintained in this theory, and first consider the principle of representation, with the argument constructed upon it. The argument proceeds on the principle of responsibility from representation, and brings illustrations and proofs from various relations of human life. The minister binds the State; the agent, the principal; the child, the parent; the parent, the child. In purely voluntary or conventional associations it is admitted that representation does not impose a common moral responsibility. It is otherwise in such relations as arise in the providential ordering and requirements of human life. Such are the relations above specified. They are inseparable from our present mode of existence, and must be in the order of providence. The principle of responsibility rules in all such instances of representation, and therefore rules in the instance of Adam.^{[522] [522]} Wallace:Representative Responsibility, discourses i, ii; Hodge:Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 196-201. The argument will not sustain the representative place of Adam as maintained in this theory. On the ground of his federal headship it is maintained that the guilt of his sin is justly imputed to his offspring, and constitutes in them the ground of divine punishment. The instances of representation adduced fall far short of any analogy for the support of any such view. Neither guilt nor penalty is involved. If in the intercourse of nations a minister is invested with plenipotential functions, the State which he represents is bound by his action, and equally when it is unwise and wrong as when it is wise and right; but this obligation involves neither guilt nor punishment. The same is true in all the other instances. The principal is responsible for the action of his agent, so far as empowered to act for him, but can neither be accounted guilty nor suffer punishment for any wrong-doing of the agent. By provisions of law a father may be held responsible for such action of his child as may involve the pecuniary interests of others; but unless in some way a sharer in the wrong-doing his responsibility is not in the nature of either guilt or punishment. In all such instances as we have considered the responsibility is merely political or pecuniary. The law which imposes it is purely one of economical expediency. Interests are thus protected which otherwise might be greatly wronged. To hold either the State, or the principal^ or the father guilty and the subject of punishment in such cases is to depart utterly from the plainest principles of justice and common sense. Hence this utter lack of analogy to the representative place of Adam, as maintained in this theory, renders all such instances utterly valueless for the argument.

Special account is made of instances of attainder, in which treason or some other high crime is punished with confiscation of estates and political disfranchisement, and in which, in the terms of the law and the judicial procedure, the children of the criminal, for successive generations, and even forever, are involved in the same consequences. Any justification of such procedure must arise from the exigencies of the government. Such judicial measures are expedients of government, and can have no other defense. The idea is that such an extension of the evil consequences of treason will more effectually restrain others from its commission. Its justification from its end is not the question now in hand. The point we make is this: Such procedure of government neither constitutes the children guilty of the father’s treason nor makes the evil visited upon them in any proper sense a punishment. It is admitted that the act of treason cannot he charged to the children, because it is strictly personal to the high offender; but the guilt of the act is as rigidly and exclusively personal to him as the act itself, and no more can it be charged to them. But guilt absolutely conditions punishment. Hence, as the children cannot be constituted guilty of the parental treason, the evil visited upon them cannot in any proper sense of justice but a punishment. There is nothing in such instances which can support the representative theory.

2. Biblical Instances of Imputation of Sin.—Reference to a few instances will suffice for the review of this argument. We may name the cases of Achan, Gehazi, Dathan, and Abiram. Hodge brings these, with many others, into the argument.^[523] No one makes a stronger use of them. Seemingly, they sustain his argument; but a deeper view discovers their insufficiency.

^[523]Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 198-205.

Under the divine administration suffering is visited upon families in consequence of parental sins. This is not to be questioned. Whether they are strictly penal is the real question. The same insuperable difficulties of guilt and punishment are present in these cases as in those under human administrations. The evil consequences, as affecting others than the actually criminal, are administered on a law of governmental expediency, not on a law of retributive justice. There is such a law in the divine administration, as in the human. The policy may be illustrated by legitimate usages of war. Consequences cannot be restricted to personal demerit. When suffering is even purposely inflicted upon the innocent they are not accounted guilty, nor is their suffering a punishment to them. The Jewish theocracy was political in its functions as well as moral and religious. Nor can all its measures and ministries be interpreted without a law of economical expediency. Even under a theocracy men were still men, and could be governed only as such. For rectoral ends, and for the great purposes of the theocracy, its judicial inflictions sometimes involved the innocent with the actual offenders, but not as punishments on the ground of imputed guilt. Nor can such exceptional and temporary instances conclude the guilt and punishment of all mankind on account of the sin of Adam as federal head of the race.

3. More Direct Proof-Texts.—A chief text of the class is found in God’s proclamation of his name to Moses; which proclamation is a lofty characterization of his own majesty and truth, goodness and mercy. To all the expression of his clemency and gracious forgiveness of sin, it is added, that he “will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). The text has special application to the sin of idolatry. Mr. Wesley so regarded it. Maimonides is cited for the same view. There was in this case special reason for such visitation. The tendency to idolatry was persistent and strong. Its restraint was necessary to the great purposes of the theocracy. The severity of means answered to this exigency. So we find God ordering the utter destruction of any city whose inhabitants gave themselves to idolatry (Deuteronomy 13:12-18). Even the cattle were to be put to the sword, and all the property to be destroyed. This judgment transcended the possibility of guilt in the subjects of its infliction, and therefore could not be to them a punishment. The proper interpretation is upon the same principles on which we interpreted the instances of imputation previously considered. Such extreme measures were necessary to the great ends of the theocracy, and permissible on that ground, but could not be punishments to any who were not actual sharers in the sinning. In this manner we interpret the “visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.” The standard text is from Paul (Romans 5:12-19). Since the time of Augustine This has been the great text in doctrinal anthropology. Whether it is the formally exact expression of doctrine which its dogmatic use assumes, may fairly be questioned. In the Augustinian anthropology it is equally the reliance of both the realistic and representative schools. Each is sure of its full support, and, equally, that it gives no support to the other; indeed, that it refutes the other. But, with their profound difference, it cannot be the doctrinal ground of both. We may reasonably infer that it supports neither. Arminianism can fairly interpret the text consistently with its own anthropology, though in some facts it differs profoundly from the Augustinian.^[524] Respecting individual expositors of the text, we rarely find any two in full agreement.^[525] This is the case with expositors of the same school of anthropology. A text so open to diverse and opposing interpretations cannot in itself be the determining ground of any particular doctrine. Such facts strongly suggest the prudence of less dogmatism in its doctrinal use. If the passage is taken as formally exact and scientific in doctrinal statement, no proper consistency of its several parts can be attained; nor can it as a whole be brought into harmony with any system of theology. While seemingly exact and definite in doctrinal expression, it should rather be taken in a popular sense. This is the view of Knapp.^[526] His view is appropriated by McClintock and Strong.^[527] The passage is a popular statement of great facts for the expression and illustration of a ruling idea—the abounding fullness of grace and life in the redemptive mediation of Christ.

^[524]As representatives of interpretation in the realistic, representative, and Arminian schools, we may instance Shedd, Hodge, and Whedon, in their respective Commentaries on Romans.

^[525]Many instances of opposing views are given in the respective Commentaries of Stewart and Meyer on Romans.

^[526]Christian Theology, sec. lxxvi, iii.

^[527]Cyclopaedia, “Imputation.” The diversities of interpretation, and particularly the opposing interpretations of the realistic and representative schools, with their reciprocal refutations, deny to this text any sufficient proof of a common sharing in the guilt of Adam’s sin, as held in the Augustinian anthropology. After a searching study we are satisfied that it does not contain the proof of such a doctrine.^[528]

^[528] We think this study important, but the extent of its necessary elaboration renders it inappropriate for a place in the body of our work. It will be given in an appendix to the second volume.

4. Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ.—From an imputation of the righteousness of Christ it is often attempted to prove the imputation of Adam’s sin to the race, as maintained in ,the representative theory. Theoretically, the two imputations stand together in the Federal theology. This theology requires both, and also the federal headship respectively of Adam and Christ. These federal headships are the ground of the imputation respectively of the sin of Adam and the righteousness of Christ. In the present argument for the representative theory the imputation of the righteousness of Christ is assumed as a fact, and from this fact is inferred the imputation of Adam’s sin to all men. It may further be said that the argument also intends the vindication of this imputation. Two questions are thus raised: Is the assumed imputation of the righteousness of Christ a fact? and, if a fact, would it warrant the inference respecting the imputation of Adam’s sin? In considering these questions we may change their order.

There is a profound difference between the immediate imputation of sin as a ground of punishment and the immediate imputation of righteousness as the ground of reward. The representative theory can say much for the latter as the outflowing of the divine grace and love; but what can it say for the former? Here no appeal can be made to the divine love. Nor can there be any appeal to the divine Justice. The theory denies all actual sharing in the sin of Adam as a ground of demerit. This is one of its strong points against the realistic theory. The idea of such desert is excluded by the nature of the imputation as immediate. The imputed sin is the very first ground of punitive desert. Hence the theory means a purely gratuitous imposition of guilt upon all men. Such an imputation could have no warrant or vindication in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. The profound difference of the two precludes both the warrant and the vindication. The words of Shedd are forceful and to the point: “The doctrine of a gratuitous justification is intelligible and rational; but the doctrine of a gratuitous damnation is unintelligible and absurd.”^{[529] [529]} History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii, p. 163.

It is thus manifest that the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, even if a truth of the Scriptures, could neither support nor vindicate a purely gratuitous imputation of Adam’s sin to the race as the judicial ground of depravity and death. There is, in truth, no such imputation of the righteousness of Christ as this theory maintains, and hence the argument attempted upon its assumption is utterly groundless. However, the proper place for this question of imputation is in connection with the doctrine of justification.