Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate Imputation, because: “1. It casts so faint a light on the justice of God in the imputation of Adam's sin to adults who do as he did. 2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding.”It is unjust to hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the cause.

C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the sin [pg 619] of the race in Adam (Rom. 5:16, 18). It moreover does violence to the Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of “all sinned,” in Rom. 5:12—words which imply the oneness of the race with Adam, and the causative relation of Adam's sin to our guilt.

Certain passages which Dr. H. B. Smith, System, 317, quotes from Edwards, as favoring the theory of Mediate Imputation, seem to us to favor quite a different view. See Edwards, 2:482 sq.—“The first existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to be looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their participation in Adam's first sin; it is, as it were, the extended pollution of that sin through the whole tree, by virtue of the constituted union of the branches with the root.... I am humbly of the opinion that, if any have supposed the children of Adam to come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam's sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart, they have not so well considered the matter.” And afterwards: “Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co-existence) is in consequence of the union,”—but “not properly a consequence of the imputation of his sin; nay, rather antecedent to it, as it was in Adam himself. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of that sin, are both the consequences of that established union; but yet in such order, that the evil disposition is first, and the charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam himself.”

Edwards quotes Stapfer: “The Reformed divines do not hold immediate and mediate imputation separately, but always together.” And still further, 2:493—“And therefore the sin of the apostasy is not theirs, merely because God imputes it to them; but it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them.” It seems to us that Dr. Smith mistakes the drift of these passages from Edwards, and that in making the identification with Adam primary, and imputation of his sin secondary, they favor the theory of Adam's Natural Headship rather than the theory of Mediate Imputation. Edwards regards the order as (1) apostasy; (2) depravity; (3) guilt;—but in all three, Adam and we are, by divine constitution, one. To be guilty of the depravity, therefore, we must first be guilty of the apostasy.

For the reasons above mentioned we regard the theory of Mediate Imputation as a half-way house where there is no permanent lodgment. The logical mind can find no satisfaction therein, but is driven either forward, to the Augustinian doctrine which we are next to consider, or backward, to the New School doctrine with its atomistic conception of man and its arbitrary sovereignty of God. On the theory of Mediate Imputation, see Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:496-639; Princeton Essays, 1:129, 154, 168; Hodge, Syst. Theology, 2:205-214; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:158; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 46, 47, 474-479, 504-507.

6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam's Natural Headship.

This theory was first elaborated by Augustine (354-430), the great opponent of Pelagius; although its central feature appears in the writings of Tertullian (died about 220), Hilary (350), and Ambrose (374). It is frequently designated as the Augustinian view of sin. It was the view held by the Reformers, Zwingle excepted. Its principal advocates in this country are Dr. Shedd and Dr. Baird.

It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole race at the time of Adam's transgression existed, not individually, but seminally, in him as its head. The total life of humanity was then in Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam's will was yet the will of the species. In Adam's free act, the will of the race revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him.”

Adam's sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed as one moral person or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to evil. In Rom. 5:12—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed unto all men, because all sinned in Adam their natural head.”