C. That Adam's sin cannot be imputed to us, since we cannot repent of it.
The objection has plausibility only so long as we fail to distinguish between Adam's sin as the inward apostasy of the nature from God, and Adam's sin as the outward act of transgression which followed and manifested that apostasy. We cannot indeed repent of Adam's sin as our personal act or as Adam's personal act, but regarding his sin as the apostasy of our common nature—an apostasy which manifests itself in our personal transgressions as it did in his, we can repent of it and do repent of it. In [pg 630] truth it is this nature, as self-corrupted and averse to God, for which the Christian most deeply repents.
God, we know, has not made our nature as we find it. We are conscious of our depravity and apostasy from God. We know that God cannot be responsible for this; we know that our nature is responsible. But this it could not be, unless its corruption were self-corruption. For this self-corrupted nature we should repent, and do repent. Anselm, De Concep. Virg., 23—“Adam sinned in one point of view as a person, in another as man (i. e., as human nature which at that time existed in him alone). But since Adam and humanity could not be separated, the sin of the person necessarily affected the nature. This nature is what Adam transmitted to his posterity, and transmitted it such as his sin had made it, burdened with a debt which it could not pay, robbed of the righteousness with which God had originally invested it; and in every one of his descendants this impaired nature makes the persons sinners. Yet not in the same degree sinners as Adam was, for the latter sinned both as human nature and as a person, while new-born infants sin only as they possess the nature.”—more briefly, in Adam a person made nature sinful; in his posterity, nature makes persons sinful.
D. That, if we be responsible for Adam's first sin, we must also be responsible not only for every other sin of Adam, but for the sins of our immediate ancestors.
We reply that the apostasy of human nature could occur but once. It occurred in Adam before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and revealed itself in that eating. The subsequent sins of Adam and of our immediate ancestors are no longer acts which determine or change the nature,—they only show what the nature is. Here is the truth and the limitation of the Scripture declaration that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father” (Ez. 18:20; cf. Luke 13:2, 3; John 9:2, 3). Man is not responsible for the specifically evil tendencies communicated to him from his immediate ancestors, as distinct from the nature he possesses; nor is he responsible for the sins of those ancestors which originated these tendencies. But he is responsible for that original apostasy which constituted the one and final revolt of the race from God, and for the personal depravity and disobedience which in his own case has resulted therefrom.
Augustine, Encheiridion, 46, 47, leans toward an imputing of the sins of immediate ancestors, but intimates that, as a matter of grace, this may be limited to “the third and fourth generation” (Ex. 20:5). Aquinas thinks this last is said by God, because fathers live to see the third and fourth generation of their descendants, and influence them by their example to become voluntarily like themselves. Burgesse, Original Sin, 397, adds the covenant-idea to that of natural generation, in order to prevent imputation of the sins of immediate ancestors as well as those of Adam. So also Shedd. But Baird, Elohim Revealed, 508, gives a better explanation, when he distinguishes between the first sin of nature when it apostatized, and those subsequent personal actions which merely manifest the nature but do not change it. Imagine Adam to have remained innocent, but one of his posterity to have fallen. Then the descendants of that one would have been guilty for the change of nature in him, but not guilty for the sins of ancestors intervening between him and them.
We add that man may direct the course of a lava-stream, already flowing downward, into some particular channel, and may even dig a new channel for it down the mountain. But the stream is constant in its quantity and quality, and is under the same influence of gravitation in all stages of its progress. I am responsible for the downward tendency which my nature gave itself at the beginning; but I am not responsible for inherited and specifically evil tendencies as something apart from the nature,—for they are not apart from it,—they are forms or manifestations of it. These tendencies run out after a time,—not so with sin of nature. The declaration of Ezekiel (18:20), “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,” like Christ's denial that blindness was due to the blind man's individual sins or those of his parents (John 9:2, 3), simply shows that God does not impute to us the sins of our immediate ancestors; it is not inconsistent with the doctrine [pg 631]that all the physical and moral evil of the world is the result of a sin of Adam with which the whole race is chargeable.
Peculiar tendencies to avarice or sensuality inherited from one's immediate ancestry are merely wrinkles in native depravity which add nothing to its amount or its guilt. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:88-94—“To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary trait.” H. B. Smith, System, 296—“Ezekiel 18 does not deny that descendants are involved in the evil results of ancestral sins, under God's moral government; but simply shows that there is opportunity for extrication, in personal repentance and obedience.” Mozley on Predestination, 179—“Augustine says that Ezekiel's declarations that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father are not a universal law of the divine dealings, but only a special prophetical one, as alluding to the divine mercy under the gospel dispensation and the covenant of grace, under which the effect of original sin and the punishment of mankind for the sin of their first parent was removed.” See also Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:31 (Syst. Doct., 2:326, 327), where God's visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children (Ex. 20:5) is explained by the fact that the children repeat the sins of the parents. German proverb: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”
E. That if Adam's sin and condemnation can be ours by propagation, the righteousness and faith of the believer should be propagable also.
We reply that no merely personal qualities, whether of sin or righteousness, are communicated by propagation. Ordinary generation does not transmit personal guilt, but only that guilt which belongs to the whole species. So personal faith and righteousness are not propagable. “Original sin is the consequent of man's nature, whereas the parents' grace is a personal excellence, and cannot be transmitted” (Burgesse).