098. III. Speculative Or Mixed Theories.

III. Speculative Or Mixed Theories. The Calvinistic anthropology involves serious perplexities, particularly in the tenets of a common participation in the sin of Adam and the penal infliction of depravity on that ground. The intrinsic sinfulness of depravity itself, as deserving in all an eternal penal retribution, deepens these perplexities. The division into the two modes of accounting for the common participation in the sin of Adam has a sufficient occasion in these perplexities. Some have thought the facts concerned more manageable or less perplexing on the realistic mode, while others for a like reason have favored the representative mode. Neither party pretends to a solution of the difficulties. In the view of some minds they are too great for the acceptance of either mode. Hence, with professed adherence to the Augustinian anthropology, other theories have been devised, but without any improvement of doctrine, while mostly definite tenets are replaced with speculations or mere assumptions. No light is given.

1. Mediate Imputation of Adamic Sin.—It has been attempted to replace the theory of immediate with that of mediate imputation. The former goes properly, in a strictly scientific sense exclusively, with the representative mode of the common Adamic sin. In all forms of the realistic mode every soul is held to be a responsible sharer in the sinning of Adam, and the imputation of the sin is mediated by that responsible participation. In the representative mode the race has no part in the sinning of Adam which mediates the imputation of his sin. Without any fault of the race, and before its corruption through the sin of Adam, the guilt of his sin is imputed, and thus immediately, to every soul.

It is not strange that some Calvinistic minds recoil from such a view. In such a recoil, Placaeus, an eminent Reformed theologian of Saumur, France, propounded, in the seventeenth century, the theory of mediate imputation. He began with an open denial of immediate imputation as a violation of justice. As such imputation in the very nature of it disclaims all participation of the race in the sinning of Adam, the immediate imputation of his sin to his offspring in a measure to constitute every soul as guilty as himself could not, in the view of Placaeus, be other than an injustice. His doctrine was widely assailed. There was more than individual hostility. The doctrine was soon condemned by the National Synod of France, and also by the Churches of Switzerland in the Formula Consensus Helvetici. Under this severe pressure, Placaeus propounded a doctrine of mediate or consequent imputation in place of the standard immediate or antecedent imputation.^[486] There is a wide difference between the two theories. In the latter the imputation of sin precedes the common depravity and is the ground of its penal infliction; while in the former the imputation of sin is subsequent to the common depravity, and on that ground. With such a widely different theory Placaeus still professed adherence to the doctrine of imputation. Some received his doctrine with favor. Nor has it been without friends even to the present time. Some have claimed for its support the weighty authority of Edwards, though others dispute the claim. There is nothing in his discussion sufficiently definite to determine the question. Edwards was predominantly a realist on the Adamic connection of the race, and so far immediate imputation could have no consistent place in his doctrine.^[487] Henry Rogers is one of the later advocates of the doctrine.^{[488] [486]} De Statu Hominis Lapsi ante Gratiam;De Imputatione Pnmi Peccati Adami.

^[487]Works, pp. 481-495.

^[488]Genius and Writings of Jonathan Edwards. The doctrine of Placaeus as stated by himself is not thoroughly clear. Nor have his critics brought it into clearness. There is no obscurity in the denial of immediate imputation, for that imputation has a well-defined sense in the Calvinistic anthropology. The lack of clearness comes with the assertion of mediate in place of immediate imputation. The latter means the imputation of Adam’s sin antecedently to any fault or corruption of the race. Seemingly, therefore, mediate imputation, while in the order of thought subsequent to the common depravity and conditioned on it, should still include the accounting of the sin .of Adam to the race. Such a view, however, would be utterly inconsistent with the denial of immediate imputation as a violation of justice. The inheritance of the common depravity under a law of propagation could not constitute any ground of responsibility for the sin of Adam; and its imputation simply as mediated by that depravity would as fully violate justice as immediate imputation. “What remains of the theory of Placceus? Two things: the common depravity of the race as a genetic transmission, not as a punishment; the sinfulness and demerit of the inherited depravity. The first fact is the same as our second fundamental theory in accounting for the depravity of the race. The second fact is the common Calvinistic doctrine of the sinfulness and demerit of native depravity—a question quite apart from all questions respecting the ground of depravity. It thus appears that the theory of Placaeus differs from the Calvinistic anthropology only in the denial of the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin; which, however, carries with it the denial that the common depravity is a penal infliction.^[489]

^[489] Cunningham:Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, pp. 379-394; Shedd:History of Doctrines, vol. ii, pp. 158-163;Princeton Essays, First Series, essay viii.

2. Hypothetic Ground of the Imputation of Sin.—The theory thus expressed is technically styled Scientia Media Dei. It is this: God in his absolute prescience knew that any and every soul of the race, if placed in the state of Adam, would sin just as lie did; therefore he might justly and did actually impute the sin of Adam to every soul. This hypothetic sin is the ground on which the common, sinful depravity is judicially inflicted upon the race. Strange as the theory is, it has not been without favor. Its acceptance by any one presupposes two things: an unyielding adherence to the common guiltiness of Adam’s sin, and a sense of intolerable difficulties in both the realistic and representative modes of accounting for such guiltiness. Surely its own difficulties are no less, while the hypothetic ground on which the sin of Adam is held to be imputed is the merest assumption. Who knows the alleged fact of the divine cognizance, that every soul of the race, if placed in the state of Adam, would sin just as he did? Even if a fact, it could not justify the universal, or even the most limited, imputation of his sin. Otherwise, we might all be held responsible for any and every sin which in any condition we might possibly commit. “But it is a new sort of justice, which would allow us to be punished for sins which we never committed, or never intended to commit, but only might possibly have committed under certain circumstances.”^[490] “If it were allowable to refer to some intermediate knowledge on God’s part as a basis of imputing the guilt and condemnation of original sin to all men, we might with equal propriety argue that God could justly have introduced mankind at once into a state of misery or bliss, upon the ground of his foreknowledge that certain of them would voluntarily make themselves liable to the one or the other destiny.”^{[491] [490]} Knapp:Christian Theology, p. 277.

^[491]Muller:Christian Doctrine of Sin, vol. ii, p. 338. This theory gives no distinct law of the Adamic origin of depravity. Depravity itself is still a punishment, judicially inflicted on the ground of a common participation in the sin of Adam. The participation is in the mode of imputation, with a valueless, or even worse than valueless, change of its ground. The economy of representation is replaced with the purely hypothetic assumption respecting the cognizance of the divine prescience. If this assumption could be true, or even were true, a more baseless ground of imputation could not be imagined. It is worse than baseless; it would subvert the most sacred principles of moral government. So far from any relief from the perplexities of immediate imputation, it brings in far deeper perplexities.

3. Origin of Sin in a Pre-existent Life.—With the tenets of native depravity as a judicial infliction, and the sinfulness of depravity in a sense to deserve eternal punishment, the problem is to account for them. Confessedly, they are not explained to rational thought in any mode previously considered. In the view of some minds the only valid ground of guilt and punishment, in any strict judicial sense, must lie in a free, personal violation of duty. The realistic mode of accounting for the penal infliction of depravity might claim to justify itself on this principle, but could hardly pretend to such a claim respecting the alleged demerit of native depravity. Some, however, find no place for this principle in any form of realism; indeed, reject the whole theory. If such must still hold the native sinfulness of all men, there is for them no better resource than the theory of free, personal sinning in a previous state of existence. They would thus avoid the perplexities of the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin, and theoretically secure the only principle which, in their view, can justify the common native sinfulness.

Some have adopted this view. The notion of a pre-existence of human souls has been far more extensive than its acceptance in order to avoid peculiar difficulties of the Augustinian anthropology. It holds a wide place in heathen religions, and appears in Grecian philosophy. It found a place in Jewish thought, as clearly implied in the question of our Lord’s disciples: “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind” (John 9:2)? Origen, of the third century, taught the doctrine. It is the theory of Edward Beecher’s Conflict of Ages, and is maintained with special reference to the Augustinian anthropology. The eminent Julius Midler maintains it, and for the reason above stated, that only free, personal sinning can justify the sinful state in which he believed all men to be born. He could find no place for such sinning except in a conscious pre-existence of all human souls, and, therefore, accepted this view, that he might justify his theory of native sinfulness.^{[492] [492]} Christian Doctrine of Sin, book iv, chap. iv. The theory is a purely speculative one. Midler himself so styles it, and freely concedes the absence of all direct proof in Scripture and consciousness.^[493] In his view, as appears in his elaborate discussion, the whole proof lies in its necessity to a vindication of the divine justice in a common native sinfulness. There is native sinfulness. There cannot be sinfulness without free, personal violation of duty. Such action, as an account of native sinfulness, was possible to us only in a pre-existent state. Therefore we must have personally existed and freely sinned in such a state. This is the argument.

^[493]Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 36, 396.

Native sinfulness, as maintained in the Augustinian anthropology, is not a problem to be solved in this purely speculative mode. Logical requirements are valid for truth only with validity in the premises. Very few accept both premises in this case. Many deny the native sinfulness in the sense assumed, and many deny the necessity of free, personal agency to such sinfulness. The former have no need of the interpretation which the theory offers, and therefore see no proof in its logical requirements; the latter would rather face the perplexities of the immediate imputation of sin than accept relief in this purely speculative mode. Very serious difficulties beset the theory in its relation to the Scriptures. It implies, and must admit, that our progenitors, just as their offspring, freely sinned in the pre-existence assumed, and therefore began their Edenic life in a sinful and fallen state.^[494] This is plainly contrary to the Scriptures, in the sense of which, as we have previously shown, the beginning of this life was in innocence and subjective holiness. Again, as the Edenic state was strictly probationary in its moral and religious economy, this theory must assume a possible self-recovery of our progenitors from their fallen state; for such a probation intrinsically requires the possibility of righteousness in the fulfillment of its duties.^[495] But it is the clear sense of Scripture that there is no self-recovery of sinners; indeed, that there is no recovery of such except through a redemptive economy. Further, while this theory holds that each soul is born in an evil state in consequence of free, personal sinning in a previous existence, it is the clear sense of Scripture, as previously shown, that this state of evil is the consequence of the Adamic fall in the Edenic probation. Finally, in view of the Adamic connection of the race as set forth in the Scriptures, this theory is constrained to admit a deeper corruption of our nature in consequence of the Adamic fall.^[496] But if, as alleged, such corruption is itself sin, then, with the deeper corruption, each without any agency of his own has the deeper sin, and therefore in violation of the fundamental principle of Justice which the theory asserts. Thus it falls back into the deepest perplexity of the Augustinian anthropology, from which it has vainly attempted an escape in the mode of pre-temporal sinning.

^[494]Muller:Christian Doctrine of Sin, vol. ii, p. 380.

^[495]Ibid., p.382.

^[496]Ibid., pp. 386, 387.