Statements of the theory are found in Cocceius, Summa Doctrinæ de Fœdere, cap. 1, 5; Turretin, Inst., loc. 9, quæs. 9; Princeton Essays, 1:98-185. esp. 120—“In imputation there is, first, an ascription of something to those concerned; secondly, a determination to deal with them accordingly.” The ground for this imputation is “the union between Adam and his posterity, which is twofold,—a natural union, as between father and children, and the union of representation, which is the main idea here insisted on.”123—“As in Christ we are constituted righteous by the imputation of righteousness, so [pg 614]in Adam we are made sinners by the imputation of his sin.... Guilt is liability or exposedness to punishment; it does not in theological usage imply moral turpitude or criminality.” 162—Turretin is quoted: “The foundation, therefore, of imputation is not merely the natural connection which exists between us and Adam—for, were this the case, all his sins would be imputed to us, but principally the moral and federal, on the ground of which God entered into covenant with him as our head. Hence in that sin Adam acted not as a private but a public person and representative.” The oneness results from contract; the natural union is frequently not mentioned at all. Marck: All men sinned in Adam, “eos representante.” The acts of Adam and of Christ are ours “jure representationis.”
G. W. Northrup makes the order of the Federal theory to be: “(1) imputation of Adam's guilt; (2) condemnation on the ground of this imputed guilt; (3) corruption of nature consequent upon treatment as condemned. So judicial imputation of Adam's sin is the cause and ground of innate corruption.... All the acts, with the single exception of the sin of Adam, are divine acts: the appointment of Adam, the creation of his descendants, the imputation of his guilt, the condemnation of his posterity, their consequent corruption. Here we have guilt without sin, exposure to divine wrath without ill-desert, God regarding men as being what they are not, punishing them on the ground of a sin committed before they existed, and visiting them with gratuitous condemnation and gratuitous reprobation. Here are arbitrary representation, fictitious imputation, constructive guilt, limited atonement.” The Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882:30, claims that Kloppenburg (1642) preceded Cocceius (1648) in holding to the theory of the Covenants, as did also the Canons of Dort. For additional statements of Federalism, see Hodge, Essays, 49-86, and Syst. Theol., 2:192-204; Bib. Sac., 21:95-107; Cunningham, Historical Theology.
To the Federal theory we object:
A. It is extra-Scriptural, there being no mention of such a covenant with Adam in the account of man's trial. The assumed allusion to Adam's apostasy in Hosea 6:7, where the word “covenant” is used, is too precarious and too obviously metaphorical to afford the basis for a scheme of imputation (see Henderson, Com. on Minor Prophets, in loco). In Heb. 8:8—“new covenant”—there is suggested a contrast, not with an Adamic, but with the Mosaic, covenant (cf. verse 9).
In Hosea 6:7—“they like Adam [marg. “men”] have transgressed the covenant” (Rev. Ver.)—the correct translation is given by Henderson, Minor Prophets: “But they, like men that break a covenant, there they proved false to me.” lxx: αὐτοὶ δέ εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος παραβαίνων διαθήκην. De Wette: “Aber sie übertreten den Bund nach Menschenart; daselbst sind sie mir treulos.” Here the word adam, translated “man,” either means “a man,” or “man,” i. e., generic man. “Israel had as little regard to their covenants with God as men of unprincipled character have for ordinary contracts.” “Like a man”—as men do. Compare Ps. 82:7—“ye shall die like men”; Hosea 8:1, 2—“they have transgressed my covenant”—an allusion to the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenant. Heb. 8:9—“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt.”
B. It contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam's sin to be God's regarding and treating the race as sinners. The Scripture, on the contrary, declares that Adam's offense constituted us sinners (Rom. 5:19). We are not sinners simply because God regards and treats us as such, but God regards us as sinners because we are sinners. Death is said to have “passed unto all men,” not because all were regarded and treated as sinners, but “because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
For a full exegesis of the passage Rom. 5:12-19, see note to the discussion of the Theory of Adam's Natural Headship, pages [625-627]. Dr. Park gave great offence by saying that the so-called “covenants” of law and of grace, referred in the Westminster Confession as made by God with Adam and Christ respectively, were really “made in Holland.”The word fœdus, in such a connection, could properly mean nothing more than “ordinance”; [pg 615]see Vergil, Georgics, 1:60-63—“eterna fœdera.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 185—“God's ‘covenant’ with men is simply his method of dealing with them according to their knowledge and opportunities.”
C. It impugns the justice of God by implying:
(a) That God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant which they had no part in establishing. The assumed covenant is only a sovereign decree; the assumed justice, only arbitrary will.
We not only never authorized Adam to make such a covenant, but there is no evidence that he ever made one at all. It is not even certain that Adam knew he should have posterity. In the case of the imputation of our sins to Christ, Christ covenanted voluntarily to bear them, and joined himself to our nature that he might bear them. In the case of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, we first become one with Christ, and upon the ground of our union with him are justified. But upon the Federal theory, we are condemned upon the ground of a covenant which we neither instituted, nor participated in, nor assented to.