Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

G. That the doctrine excludes all separate probation of individuals since Adam, by making their moral life a mere manifestation of tendencies received from him.

We reply that the objection takes into view only our connection with the race, and ignores the complementary and equally important fact of each man's personal will. That personal will does more than simply express the nature; it may to a certain extent curb the nature, or it may, on the other hand, add a sinful character and influence of its own. There is, in other words, a remainder of freedom, which leaves room for personal probation, in addition to the race-probation in Adam.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, objects to the Augustinian view that if personal sin proceeds from original, the only thing men are guilty for is Adam's sin; all subsequent sin is a spontaneous development; the individual will can only manifest its inborn character. But we reply that this is a misrepresentation of Augustine. He does not thus lose sight of the remainders of freedom in man (see references on page 620, in the statement of Augustine's view, and in the section following this, on Ability, 640-644). He says that the corrupt tree may produce the wild fruit of morality, though not the divine fruit of grace. It is not true that the will is absolutely as the character. Though character is the surest index as to what the decisions of the will may be, it is not an infallible one. Adam's first sin, and the sins of men after regeneration, prove this. Irregular, spontaneous, exceptional though these decisions are, they are still acts of the will, and they show that the agent is not bound by motives nor by character.

Here is our answer to the question whether it be not a sin to propagate the race and produce offspring. Each child has a personal will which may have a probation of its own and a chance for deliverance. Denney, Studies in Theology, 87-99—“What we inherit may be said to fix our trial, but not our fate. We belong to God as well as to the past.” “All souls are mine” (Ez. 18:4); “Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice” (John 18:37). Thomas Fuller: “1. Roboam begat Abia; that is, a bad father begat a bad son; 2. Abia [pg 634]begat Asa; that is, a bad father begat a good son; & Asa begat Josaphat; that is, a good father a good son; 4. Josaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad son. I see, Lord, from hence, that my father's piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.” Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 121—Among the Greeks, “The popular view was that guilt is inherited; that is, that the children are punished for their fathers' sins. The view of Æschylus, and of Sophocles also, was that a tendency towards guilt was inherited, but that this tendency does not annihilate man's free will. If therefore the children are punished, they are punished for their own sins. But Sophocles saw the further truth that innocent children may suffer for their fathers' sins.”

Julius Müller, Doc. Sin, 2:316—“The merely organic theory of sin leads to naturalism, which endangers not only the doctrine of a final judgment, but that of personal immortality generally.” In preaching, therefore, we should begin with the known and acknowledged sins of men. We should lay the same stress upon our connection with Adam that the Scripture does, to explain the problem of universal and inveterate sinful tendencies, to enforce our need of salvation from this common ruin, and to illustrate our connection with Christ. Scripture does not, and we need not, make our responsibility for Adam's sin the great theme of preaching. See A. H. Strong, on Christian Individualism, and on The New Theology, in Philosophy and Religion, 156-163, 164-179.

H. That the organic unity of the race in the transgression is a thing so remote from common experience that the preaching of it neutralizes all appeals to the conscience.

But whatever of truth there is in this objection is due to the self-isolating nature of sin. Men feel the unity of the family, the profession, the nation to which they belong, and, just in proportion to the breadth of their sympathies and their experience of divine grace, do they enter into Christ's feeling of unity with the race (cf. Is. 6:5; Lam. 3:39-45; Ezra 9:6; Neh. 1:6). The fact that the self-contained and self-seeking recognize themselves as responsible only for their personal acts should not prevent our pressing upon men's attention the more searching standards of the Scriptures. Only thus can the Christian find a solution for the dark problem of a corruption which is inborn yet condemnable; only thus can the unregenerate man be led to a full knowledge of the depth of his ruin and of his absolute dependence upon God for salvation.

Identification of the individual with the nation or the race: Is. 6:5—“Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”; Lam. 3:42—“We have transgressed and have rebelled”; Ezra 9:6—“I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God; for our iniquities are increased over our head”; Neh. 1:6—“I confess the sins of the children of Israel.... Yea, I and my father's house have sinned.” So God punishes all Israel for David's sin of pride; so the sins of Reuben, Canaan, Achan, Gehazi, are visited on their children or descendants.

H. B. Smith, System, 296, 297—“Under the moral government of God one man may justly suffer on account of the sins of another. An organic relation of men is regarded in the great judgment of God in history.... There is evil which comes upon individuals, not as punishment for their personal sins, but still as suffering which comes under a moral government.... Jer. 32:18 reasserts the declaration of the second commandment, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon their children. It may be said that all these are merely ‘consequences’ of family or tribal or national or race relations,—‘Evil becomes cosmical by reason of fastening on relations which were originally adapted to making good cosmical:’ but then God's plan must be in the consequences—a plan administered by a moral being, over moral beings, according to moral considerations, and for moral ends; and, if that be fully taken into view, the dispute as to 'consequences' or 'punishment' becomes a merely verbal one.”

There is a common conscience over and above the private conscience, and it controls individuals, as appears in great crises like those at which the fall of Fort Sumter summoned men to defend the Union and the Proclamation of Emancipation sounded the death-knell of slavery. Coleridge said that original sin is the one mystery that makes [pg 635]all things clear; see Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 151-157. Bradford, Heredity, 34, quotes from Elam, A Physician's Problems, 5—“An acquired and habitual vice will rarely fail to leave its trace upon one or more of the offspring, either in its original form, or one closely allied. The habit of the parent becomes the all but irresistible impulse of the child; ... the organic tendency is excited to the uttermost, and the power of will and of conscience is proportionally weakened.... So the sins of the parents are visited upon the children.”