191. I. The Question In Arminianism.

I. The Question In Arminianism.

1. A Common Adamic Sin.—By a common Adamic sin we mean a sin of the race through a participation in the sin of Adam; that the guilt of his sin is native to every soul. This view is far more common in Arminian theology than that of a sin of the corrupt nature with which we are born.

After a definite statement of the personal sin of Adam and Eve, and of its penal consequences to themselves, Arminius proceeds: “The whole of this sin, however, is not peculiar to our first parents, but is common to the entire race and to all their posterity, who, at the time when this sin was committed, were in their loins, and who have since descended from them by the natural mode of propagation, according to the primitive benediction. For in Adam ‘all have sinned’ (Romans 5:12). Wherefore, whatever punishment was brought down upon our first parents has likewise pervaded and yet pursues all their posterity. So that all men ‘are by nature the children of wrath’ (Ephesians 2:3), obnoxious to condemnation and to temporal as well as eternal death; they are also devoid of that original righteousness and true holiness (Romans 5:12; Romans 5:18-19). With these evils they would remain oppressed forever unless they were liberated by Christ Jesus; to whom be glory forever.”^[859] This is the doctrine of native guilt and damnableness through a participation in the sin of Adam. The sense of the passage is clear in its own terms, and clear beyond question when read in the light of what immediately precedes respecting the sin of Adam and its judicial consequences to himself. In this view we are all sharers in the guilt of Adam’s personal sin, and this guilt is the judicial ground, not only of the corruption of nature or spiritual death in which we are born, but also of our native amenability to the penalty of temporal and eternal death. There is in all this no recognition of any demerit of the common depravity or corruption of nature in which we are born, but rather its exclusion; for as this depravity is itself held to be a penal infliction it could not with any consistency be admitted to contain the desert of punishment. The ground of participation in the sin of our progenitors is not formally stated, but is informally indicated in the account made of our being in their loins at the time of their sinning. This is the realistic ground in distinction from the representative.

^[859]Writings, vol. i, p. 486.

There are numerous passages from the hand of Wesley which express the same form or sense of original sin that we have found in the words of Arminius. In replying to an argument of Taylor against original sin, that only Adam and Eve could be justly punishable for their sin, Wesley says: “If no other was justly punishable, then no other was punished for that transgression. But all were punished for that transgression, namely, with death. Therefore, all were justly punished for it.”^[860] He then cites with full approval the following words of Dr. Jennings: “And, since it is so plain that all men are actually punished for Adam’s sin, it must needs follow that they ‘all sinned in Adam. By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.’ They were so constituted sinners by Adam’s sinning as to become liable to the punishment threatened to his transgression.”^[861] In replying to another argument of Taylor that “no just constitution can punish the innocent,” Wesley says: “This is undoubtedly true; therefore God does not look upon infants as innocent, but as involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin; otherwise death, the punishment denounced against that sin, could not be inflicted upon them.”^[862] These citations clearly express the view of Wesley that we all share the guilt of Adam’s sin and are justly amenable to its punishment. There is no indication of the ground on which he based this common Adamic sin, or whether the realistic or the representative.

^[860]Works, vol. v, p. 526 ^[861]Ibid., p. 535.

^[862]Ibid., p. 577. On this question Fletcher is in accord with Arminius and Wesley. He holds the common guilt of the race through a participation in the sin of Adam. This appears in his doctrine of infant justification through the grace of the atonement. This grace is universal and the justification unconditional. But the justification is the cancellation of sin in the sense of demerit or guilt, and therefore implies such form of native sin. Our native sinfulness in the distinctly ethical sense of demerit, as held by Fletcher, is more than an implication thus reached; it is openly expressed and traced to its ground in the sin of Adam. In view of the greatness of Christ in comparison with Adam he argues thus : ‘‘ It follows that as Adam brought a general condemnation and a universal seed of death upon all infants, so Christ brings upon them a general justification and a universal seed of life. . . . And if Adam’s original sin was atoned for and forgiven him, as the Calvinists, I think, generally grant, does it not follow that, although all infants are by nature children of wrath, yet through the redemption of Christ they are in a state of favor or justification? For how could God damn to all eternity any of Adam’s children for a sin which Christ expiated—a sin which was forgiven almost six thousand years ago to Adam, who committed it in person? The force of this observation would strike our Calvinist brethren if they considered that we were not less in Adam’s loins when God gave his Son to Adam in the grand, original gospel promise, than when Eve prevailed on him to eat of the forbidden fruit. . . . Thus, if we all received an unspeakable injury by being seminally in Adam when he fell, according to the first covenant, we all received also an unspeakable blessing by being in his loins when God spiritually raised him up and placed him upon gospel ground.”^[863] For the present we are concerned with Fletcher’s view of our native sinfulness, and not with his doctrine of a universal justification any further than it may serve to explain the former. That we all share the guilt of Adam’s sin, the sin which he personally committed, is the clear sense of the passage cited. It is implied in the nature of the infant justification maintained, and appears in the forms of plain statement. Fletcher sets forth the same doctrine in citations from the articles, homilies, and liturgy of the Church of England.^[864] The ground of the common guilt of Adam’s sin, in this view of Fletcher, is the realistic in distinction from the representative. There is no intimation of a sin of our nature in the sense of demerit or guilt.

^[863]Works, vol. i, p. 284.

^[864]Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 255-257.

Watson is still our own most honored name in systematic theology, and his view of the native sinfulness of the race must not be overlooked. In his anthropology and in his discussion of the doctrinal issues between Calvinism and Arminianism he had special occasion for the treatment of this question. The discussion required the adjustment of his doctrine of native sinfulness to the Arminian system, and also its defense against Calvinistic implications. The attempt was not shunned; and whatever Arminians may think of its success, it is no special surprise that from the Calvinistic side it is viewed as conceding the ground of election and reprobation. On the typical relation of Adam to Christ, as set forth by Paul, Watson says: “The same apostle also adopts the phrases, ‘the first Adam’ and ‘the second Adam,’ which mode of speaking can only be explained on the ground that as sin and death descended from one, so righteousness and life flow from the other; and that what Christ is to all his spiritual seed, that Adam is to all his natural descendants.”^[865] This must mean the penal subjection of the race to spiritual, physical, and eternal death on account of the sin of Adam. Not only the terms of the passage, but its connection and the ruling idea of the discussion surely determine this sense. On the institution of the Edenic probation with Adam and Eve, Watson says: “The circumstances of the case infallibly show that, in the whole transaction, they stood before their Maker as public persons and as the legal representatives of their descendants, though in so many words they are not invested with these titles.”^{[866] [865]} Theological Institutes, vol. ii, p. 52.

^[866]Ibid., p. 53. This is simply the Calvinistic doctrine of the legal oneness of the race with Adam on the principle of representation and the just amenability of every one to the full penalty of his sin. Exceptions are taken to the Calvinistic doctrine in two points: “It asserts, indeed, the imputation of the actual commission of Adam’s sin to his descendants, which is false in fact; makes us stand chargeable with the full latitude of his transgression and all its attendant circumstances; and constitutes us, separate from all actual voluntary offense, equally guilty with him, all which are repugnant equally to our consciousness and to the equity of the case.”^[867] The representative theory in Calvinism no longer holds the imputation of Adam’s sinful deed to his posterity, and whatever point this part of Watson’s criticism might have against the realistic theory, or even against the representative theory as held when he wrote, it has no force against the latter as now held. In its present form it is not the sin of Adam as an act of personal transgression, but the guilt of his sin as an amenability to its full penalty that is imputed to his offspring. The representative character of Adam, which Mr. Watson accepts, carries with it this imputation; and against this he has no reserved ground of objection. In any case of imputation the guilt of sin is the vital fact, because it constitutes the amenability to punishment. The personal deed of Adam is quite indifferent to the imputation of its guilt as a universal amenability to the full penalty which he incurred. If the economy of representation in the Adamic probation is true in fact and valid in principle, then in the vital fact of guilt we do “stand chargeable with the full latitude of his transgression,” and, “separate from all actual voluntary offense, equally guilty with him,” which fact itself, and without any imputation of Adam’s personal deed, seems to us “repugnant equally to our consciousness and to the equity of the case.”

^[867]Ibid. With the repudiation of an extreme, and now obsolete, form of imputation, Mr. Watson still adheres to the economy of Adamic representation in all that properly belongs to it. He holds it as presented in the interpretation of Dr. Watts.^[868] In this interpretation it is doctrinally one with the present Calvinistic theory of Adamic representation. In the primitive probation Adam represented the race, and on the ground of that representation the penalty of his sin falls upon them as upon himself. Watson goes into detail, and points out the three forms of death which are thus penally consequent to the imputation of Adam’s sin: physical, spiritual, and eternal death. He does not pause even at the last. “The third consequence is eternal death, separation from God, and endless banishment from his glory in a future state. This follows from both the above premises—from the federal character of Adam, and from the eternal life given by Christ being opposed by the apostle to the death derived from Adam.”^[869] Thus all are subject to the full penalty of Adam’s sin. Infants are thus subject: “The fact of their being born liable to death, a part of the penalty, is sufficient to show that they were born under the whole malediction.”^[870] The discussion of this point is thus concluded: “Having thus established the import of the death threatened as the penalty of Adam’s transgression to include corporal, moral, or spiritual and eternal death, and showed that the sentence included also the whole of his posterity, our next step is,” etc.^[871] This is the doctrine of a common native condemnation and damnableness through a participation in the sin of Adam as legal representative of the race in the primitive probation. There is no recognition of any realistic oneness of the race with Adam, nor of a sin of our nature in the sense of punitive desert.

^[868]Theological Institutes, vol. ii, pp. 53-55.

^[869]Ibid., p. 55.

^[870]Ibid., p. 58.

^[871]Ibid., p. 61. In Dr. Pope’s discussion of original sin there is the sense of a common hereditary guilt or condemnation in consequence of the Adamic connection of the race, “Hereditary guilt is not expressly stated in the form of a proposition: the phrase is of later than scriptural origin. But when St. Paul establishes the connection between sin and death as its comprehensive penalty he teaches that the condemnation of the first sin reigns over all mankind as in some sense one with Adam.”^[872] In the elaboration of this summary statement of doctrine the same sense is repeatedly expressed. The words of Paul in Romans 5:12, are interpreted as “asserting that in divine imputation all, in some sense, sinned originally in Adam. . . . They sinned in Adam, though not guilty of the act of his sin: this, then, is hereditary condemnation on those who were not personal transgressors and on them all.”^{[873] [872]} Pope:Christian Theology, vol. ii, p. 48.

^[873]Ibid. The above citations, to which many of like meaning might be added, clearly assert a universal guilt and condemnation through a participation in the sin of Adam, but are quite indefinite as to the mode of that participation. It is true that in the denial of any sharing of the race in his sinful deed the higher realism, such as Shedd maintains, is logically excluded; but beyond this there is all the indefiniteness which lies in the words, “ that in divine imputation all, in some sense, sinned originally in Adam.” Yet a question so prominent in doctrinal anthropology could not be omitted by such a writer as Dr. Pope, and in several places his views are given. We cannot think him entirely self-consistent, for, as we understand his terms, his theory of the Adamic connection of the race in the Edenic probation is sometimes the realistic, and sometimes the representative. The fundamental difference of these theories, as we have elsewhere shown, precludes consistency in the holding of both. “The nature is condemned, and yet it is universally redeemed. However difficult it may be, we must receive the fact of a human nature, abstracted from the persons who inherit it, lost and marred in Adam and found or retrieved in Christ.”^[874] “The sin of Adam was expiated as representing the sin of the race as such, or of human nature, or of mankind: a realistic conception which was not borrowed from philosophic realism, and which no nominalism can ever really dislodge from the New Testament.”^[875] The ruling ideas of these citations belong to the realistic mode of the Adamic connection of the race as the ground of native sinfulness; nor can they be interpreted consistently with any other theory. “Original sin sprang from the federal constitution of the race: one in the unity of the unlimited many.”^[876] This is clearly and definitely the representative mode of a common Adamic guilt. In the use and meaning of terms, as clearly seen in the history of doctrinal anthropology, the federal constitution of the race means that Adam was divinely constituted the legal representative of his offspring, and that on this ground all are justly involved in the guilt and punishment of his sin.

^[874]Ibid., p. 58.

^[875]Wesley Memorial Volume, art. “Methodist Doctrine,” by Dr. Pope, pp. 177, 178. Cited in Summer’sTheology, vol. ii, p. 43.

^[876]Pope:Christian Theology, vol. ii, p. 62. In addition to these irreconcilable modes of a common Adamic guilt. Dr. Pope holds the intrinsic sinfulness of the corruption of nature with which we are born. Against the Romish doctrine, that concupiscence in the baptized is not of the nature of sin, he controversially says: “As if baptism could make that which is essentially sinful cease to be such; as if the perversion of the will, which constitutes us formally sinners as soon as we feel and assent to its operation, were not in itself sinful. . . . The current Romanist doctrine denies that men are born into the world with anything subjective in them of the strict nature of sin. . . . In virtue of this principle the true doctrine is opposed also to every account of sin which insists that it cannot be reckoned such by a righteous God save when the will actively consents; and that none can be held responsible for any state of soul or action of life which is not the result of the posture of the W’ ill at the time. There is an offending character behind the offending will.”^[877] Both the controversial issues of these passages and the principles which they assert must mean a sinfulness of the common native depravity in the sense of punitive desert. That Dr. Pope holds this doctrine he has placed beyond question in declaring that “Methodism accepts the article of the English Church”—the ninth, which he immediately cites.^[878] We are not just now concerned with the historical accuracy of this statement, but simply with Dr. Pope’s own view. After the characterization of the common native corruption derived from Adam, the article declares: “Therefore in every person born into the world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.” The whole article, with these words in it, is cited with manifest personal approval.

^[877]Christian Theology, vol. ii, pp. 83, 84.

^[878]Ibid., p. 80.

We thus find in Pope the maintenance of three distinct grounds of a common native sinfulness and damnableness. On the ground of a real oneness with Adam, and also on the ground of a representative oneness, we share the guilt and deserve the penalty of his sin. The third ground is given in the intrinsic sinfulness of the depravity of nature inherited from Adam. These views can neither be reconciled with each other nor with the determining principles of Arminianism. In the work of Dr. Summers both the realistic and representative modes of a common Adamic sin are rejected and dismissed as unworthy of disputation.^[879] One is a little surprised at this summary method, in view of the prominence of these theories in doctrinal anthropology, and especially in view of the fact that both, as we have seen in recent citations, are accepted by leading Arminian theologians. Elsewhere the representative economy is accepted. On the Adamic relation of the race as the source of original or birth sin Summers says: “The human species is viewed as a solidarity, and it is represented by its head, commonly called its ‘federal head,’ because the covenant of life and death was made with him for himself and posterity.”^[880] No Calvinistic advocate of the representative theory and the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to his offspring could take any exception to such an expression of his doctrine. As read and interpreted in the light of historical anthropology it means, and must mean, the immediate imputation of the guilt of Adam’s sin to the race on the principle of representation.

^[879]Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 36, 37.

^[880]Ibid., p. 45.

2. A Common Justification in Christ.—Arminians interpret the doctrine of original or birth sin, not merely from the Adamic connection of the race, but also from its connection with the universal atonement. A common native damnableness is in itself too thoroughly Augustinian for any consistent place in the Arminian system. Hence the Arminian theologian who assumes to find such universal sinfulness in the Adamic connection of the race is sure to supplement his doctrine with the balancing or canceling grace of a free justification in Christ. In this mode it is attempted to reconcile the doctrine of native sinfulness or demerit with the fundamental principles of Arminianism, and also to void the Calvinistic assumption that it fully concedes the ground of election and reprobation. For the present we are concerned merely with the facts in the case, and not with the logical validity of the method.

Arminius defends the doctrine of his friend Borrius, that original sin will condemn no one, and that all who die in infancy are saved; that there is no future penal doom except for actual sin.^[881] This is a great change of view from that of Arminius, previously set forth, that all so shared in the guilt of Adam’s sin as to be amenable to the penalty of eternal death. What is the ground of this change? The grace of a universal atonement which freely cancels the guilt of Adamic sin: “Because God has taken the whole human race into the grace of reconciliation, and has entered into a covenant of grace with Adam, and with the whole of his posterity in him.”

^[881]Writings, vol. i, pp. 317-321. The citation of all that Fletcher has said on this question would require much space. Referring to a prior discussion, he says: “From Romans 5:18, I proved the justification of infants: ‘As by the offense of Adam (says the apostle) judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of Christ the free gift came upon all men to justification of life.’ In support of this justification, which comes upon all men in their infancy, I now advance the following arguments.”^[882] We have no occasion to cite these arguments, as our present aim is simply to present the doctrine of Fletcher on the question of a free justification in Christ which covers the inheritance of Adamic sin. Such a doctrine he clearly maintains. The justification cancels the guilt of original sin in the case of all infants.

^[882]Works, vol. i, pp. 283, 284.

We have previously shown that Watson maintained a strong doctrine of original sin ; that the sin of Adam as representative of the race brought upon all an amenability to the threefold penalty of spiritual, physical, and eternal death. As an Arminian, however, he could not abide by this doctrine as a whole and unqualified account of man’s moral state. In itself the doctrine means, not only that we are all born with the desert of God’s wrath and damnation, but that all who die in infancy might forever suffer the penal doom of sin. Of course Watson repudiates the possibility of such a consequence. With other Arminians he supplements the Adamic connection of the race with its relation to the grace of a universal atonement. We must not view “the legal part of the whole transaction which affected our first parents and their posterity separately from the evangelical provision of mercy which was concurrent with it, and which included, in like manner, both them and their whole race. . . . As the question relates to the moral government of God, if one part of the transaction before us is intimately and inseparably connected with another and collateral procedure, it cannot certainly be viewed in its true light but in that connection. The redemption of man by Christ was certainly not an after-thought brought in upon man’s apostasy, it was aprovision, and when man fell he found justice hand in hand with mercy.”^[883] It is on the ground of this redemption as a part of the divine economy that Mr. Watson defends the common Adamic sinfulness against the accusation of injustice and wrong. Any validity of such defense must assume that the grace of the common redemption very materially limits or modifies the common native sinfulness. This assumption is made, and the gracious relief is set forth. The mode of this relief is not completely at one with Fletcher’s view. Watson does not agree with him in the actual justification of infants. “As to infants, they are not, indeed, born justified and regenerate; so that to say that original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reason before given; but they are all born under the ‘free gift,’ the effects of the ‘righteousness’ of one, which extended to ‘all men;’ and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live.”^[884] This provision is such that all who die in infancy must unconditionally share its grace in their salvation. This view is strongly maintained in connection with the passage just cited. In the case of adults, the blessings of grace freely offered in Christ more than balance the evil consequences of Adam’s sin. “In all this it is impossible to impeach the equity of the divine procedure, since no man suffers any loss or injury ultimately by the sin of Adam, but by his own willful obstinacy—the ‘abounding of grace’ by Christ having placed before all men, upon their believing, not merely compensation for the loss and injury sustained by Adam, but infinitely higher blessings, both in kind and degree, than were forfeited in him.”^[885] Such is the theodicy which Watson attempts.

^[883]Watson:Theological Institutes, vol. ii, p. 56.

^[884]Theological Institutes, vol. ii, p. 59.

^[885]Ibid., p. 57.

Dr. Pope maintains a free justification in Christ which fully covers the Adamic sin of the race. “The condemnation resting upon the race as such is removed by the virtue of the one oblation beginning with the beginning of sin. The nature of man received the atonement once for all; God in Christ is reconciled to the race of Adam; and no child of mankind is condemned eternally for the original offense, that is, for the fact of his being born into a condemned lineage.”^[886] Summers maintains the same doctrine. “If a decree of condemnation has been issued against original sin, irresponsibly derived from the first Adam, likewise a decree of justification has issued from the same court, whose benefits are unconditionally bestowed through the second Adam.”^{[887] [886]} Christian Theology, vol. ii, p. 59.

^[887]Systematic Theology, vol. ii, p. 39. By the editor.

We previously showed that all these authors maintained the sinfulness of the race, in the sense of penal desert, on the ground of its Adamic connection. In the citations under the present head they equally maintain a free and actual justification in Christ—a justification which cancels the guilt of original sin. The result is, doctrinally, a complete freedom from the original condemnation, whether on the ground of a participation in the sin of Adam or of the corruption of nature derived from him. A qualifying exception should he made in the case of Watson. He does not hold the actual justification from the guilt of original sin, but a provisional justification in a universal atonement, which is made “in order to” a universal justification. While this justification must become unconditionally actual in the case of all who die in infancy, it is only conditionally available on the part of such as reach the responsibilities of probation: this is the special view of Watson. It follows, and is openly maintained, that no one can suffer final condemnation simply on the ground of Adamic sin.^{[888] [888]} Theological Institutes, vol. ii, pp. 399, 400.

3. Denial of Concession to Calvinism.—On the ground of original sin as a just amenability to the divine judgment and wrath, God may graciously elect a part to salvation in Christ, and without any injustice to the rest leave them to the penal doom which their sin justly deserves. This often-uttered principle of Calvinism is well expressed in these words : “ Cum omnes homines in Adamo peccaverint, et rei sint facti maledictionis et mortis aeternae, Deus nemiui fecisset injuriam, si universum genus humanum in peccato et raaledictione relinquere, ac propter peccatum damnare voluisset.”^[889] If on the ground of original sin all men justly deserve the doom of eternal perdition, then in the election of grace God might freely choose a part to salvation in Christ, without any injustice or wrong in the reprobation or pretention of the rest, who are thereby merely delivered over to the doom which they deserve. On this ground and in this manner Calvinism assumes that the doctrine of original sin which Arminianism maintains fully concedes the ground of election and reprobation.^{[890] [889]} Canons of the Synod of Dort, Predestination.

^[890]Rice:God Sovereign and Man Free, pp. 96-106.

Arminians who hold the strongest doctrine of original sin must dispute this concession—must, whether consistently or not. This is uniformly done. It would be easy to fill much space with citations in point, but a few will suffice. It will readily be seen that the ground on which the Calvinistic assumption is denied is the universality of the redemption in Christ. “It is an easy and plausible thing to say, in the usual loose and general way of stating the sublapsarian doctrine, that the whole race having fallen in Adam, and become justly liable to eternal death, God might, without any impeachment of his justice, in the exercise of his sovereign grace, appoint some to life and salvation by Christ, and leave the others to their deserved punishment. But this is a false view of the case, built upon the false assumption that the whole race were personally and individually, in consequence of Adam’s fall, absolutely liable to eternal death. That very fact, which is the foundation of the whole scheme, is easy to be refuted on the clearest authority of Scripture; while not a passage can be adduced, we may boldly affirm, which sanctions any such doctrine.”^[891] We shall see in another place the method of Watson’s refutation of the Calvinistic position. “The Arminian doctrine in its purest and best form avoided the error of the previous theories, retaining their truth. It held the Adamic unity of the race: ‘in Adam all have sinned,’ and ‘all men are by nature the children of wrath,’ But it maintained also, ‘That the most gracious God has provided for all a remedy for that general evil which was delivered to us from Adam, free and gratuitous in his beloved Son Jesus Christ, as it were a new and another Adam. So that the baneful error of those is plainly apparent who are accustomed to found upon that original sin the decree of absolute reprobation invented by themselves.’”^[892] The inner citation is from the Apology of the Remonstrants, and thus gives the earliest Arminian view of this question, which clearly receives the approval of Dr. Pope. “Methodism clearly perceives that to admit that mankind are actually born into the world justly under condemnation is to grant the foundation of the whole Calvinistic scheme. Granted natal desert of damnation, there can be no valid objection to the sovereign election of a few out of the reprobate mass, or to limited atonement, irresistible grace, and final perseverance to secure the present and eternal salvation of the sovereignly predestinated number. . . . Representative theologians of Methodism from the beginning until now, from Fletcher to Pope, have overthrown this fundamental teaching of Calvinism with the express statement of the Scriptures, setting over against the death-dealing first Adam the life-giving second.”^{[893] [891]} Watson:Theological Institutes, vol. ii, pp. 394, 395.

^[892]Pope:Christian Theology, vol. ii, pp. 78, 79.

^[893]Summers:Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 38, 39. By the editor.