Over against the maxim: “All sin consists in sinning,” we put the more correct statement: Personal sin consists in sinning, but in Adam's first sinning the race also sinned, so that “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22). Denney, Studies in Theology, 86—“Sin is not only personal but social; not only social but organic; character and all that is involved in character are capable of being attributed not only to individuals but to societies, and eventually to the human race itself; in short, there are not only isolated sins and individual sinners, but what has been called a kingdom of sin upon earth.” Leslie Stephen: “Man not dependent on a race is as meaningless a phrase as an apple that does not grow on a tree.” “Yet Aaron Burr and Abraham Lincoln show how a man may throw away every advantage of the best heredity and environment, while another can triumph over the worst. Man does not take his character from external causes, but shapes it by his own willing submission to influences from beneath or from above.”
Wm. Adams Brown: “The idea of inherited guilt can be accepted only if paralleled by the idea of inherited good. The consequences of sin have often been regarded as social, while the consequences of good have been regarded as only individual. But heredity transmits both good and evil.” Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley Ward: “Why bowest thou, O soul of mine, Crushed by ancestral sin? Thou hast a noble heritage, That bids thee victory win. The tainted past may bring forth flowers, As blossomed Aaron's rod: No legacy of sin annuls Heredity from God.” For further statements with regard to race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:29-39 (System Doctrine, 2:324-333). For the modern view of the Fall, and its reconciliation with the doctrine of evolution, see J. H. Bernard, art.: The Fall, in Hastings' Dict. of Bible; A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-180; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.
(e) There is a race-sin, therefore, as well as a personal sin; and that race-sin was committed by the first father of the race, when he comprised the whole race in himself. All mankind since that time have been born in the state into which he fell—a state of depravity, guilt, and condemnation. To vindicate God's justice in imputing to us the sin of our first father, many theories have been devised, a part of which must be regarded as only attempts to evade the problem by denying the facts set before us in the Scriptures. Among these attempted explanations of the Scripture statements, we proceed to examine the six theories which seem most worthy of attention.
The first three of the theories which we discuss may be said to be evasions of the problem of original sin; all, in one form or another, deny that God imputes to all men Adam's sin, in such a sense that all are guilty for it. These theories are the Pelagian, the Arminian, and the New School. The last three of the theories which we are about to treat, namely, the Federal theory, the theory of Mediate Imputation, and the theory [pg 597]of Adam's Natural Headship, are all Old School theories, and have for their common characteristic that they assert the guilt of inborn depravity. All three, moreover, hold that we are in some way responsible for Adam's sin, though they differ as to the precise way in which we are related to Adam. We must grant that no one, even of these latter theories, is wholly satisfactory. We hope, however, to show that the last of them—the Augustinian theory, the theory of Adam's natural headship, the theory that Adam and his descendants are naturally and organically one—explains the largest number of facts, is least open to objection, and is most accordant with Scripture.
I. Theories of Imputation.
1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.
Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.
According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.