ordinary generation.”+ “The COVENANT being made with Adam as a public person” (here there is a dis- tinct definition of the representative theory of Adam’s oneness with the race, and not directly nor by implica- tion a hint of his being the genus homo, or of our generic nature acting as an impersonal co-agent with him in his apostasy), “not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned im him, and fell with him in that first transgression.” {
The objections to this realistic theory are many and very serious :—
(1.) No logical dividing line can ever be drawn be- tween Reahsm and Pantheism. For (a) if all men,
of all varieties, all generations and local habitations,
are numerically one substance, why may not a higher
genus unite all animals or all entities in one numerical
substance, one in essence, multitudinous in its transient * Conf. Faith, ch. vii., 3 2. Tf Ibid., ch. vi., 2 3. t L. Cat. 22.
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 99
modes? And (6) if will be not personal, if many thou- CHAPTER sand years before we existed as persons we were guilty co-agents in a crime in virtue of the ancient existence of the total genus of which we are personal modes, what evidence have we left that the personal mode we call ourselves may not relapse into the essence from which it sprang, and that all things phenomenal may not be passing moments in successive modifications (personal or otherwise) of one underlying substance ? :
(2.) This theory has no shadow of ground in the Scriptures. It is purely a creation of human specula- tion in the effort to reconcile, speculatively, the facts of human experience with our abstract notions of what justice requires on the part of God. It therefore, even if legitimate as a philosophical theory, can never be ad- mitted for one roment to the place of a doctrine.
(3.) But even as an attempted reconciliation between the fact of innate sin and our ideas of divine justice, it breaks down utterly. All the ideas we have or possibly can have concerning sin, moral obligation, guilt, justice, or the like, are derived from our own moral sense and from Scripture. But the moral sense of every man and the Scriptures teach us nothing about moral agency or responsibility which is not personal. An impersonal will, an impersonal obligation, an impersonal sin, are all as utterly inconceivable as a square circle or a red sound. No man’s conscience is bound, however much his mind may be confused by such words. The idea of a generic nature, acting as a guilty co-agent with a person in a crime, even if it were true, throws no light upon the justice of subjecting persons not then existing to a terrible personal penalty.
(4.) Hence this figment of the numerical union of every person of the race in Adam practically collapses into the poor Root theory of Placeeus and the New
CHAPTER Vil.
100 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
England divines, which denies that antenatal forfeiture this Realistic theory was excogitated to defend, and maintains that the gualt of his sin is not ours, and that the depravity of his nature, consequent upon his sin, is made ours by an ordinary physiological law of generation. The effort to prove man a sinner on this scheme ends by reducing sin to the category of transmissible physiological accidents, such as red hair or a prognathous skull.
(5.) If the entire genus was in Adam, the entire post- —
diluvian race was, in the same sense, in Noah. If we were guilty co-agents in the first sin of the one, because of numerical and physical identity, we must be, for the same reason and to the same extent, guilty of every one of the sins of Noah. And every existing person must literally, and by direct consequence of identity of nature, be as guilty of all the sins of all his anc€stors as he is of his own personal transgressions.
(6,) If the guilt as well as the moral corruption of the generic nature is inherent in that nature, and passes into every individual who shares in it, the awful conse-
" oj ee
quence would follow that the guilt for which the human —
race is cursed attaches as much to the human soul and body of the Lord Jesus as to any other. Corruption of nature may be removed by divine power, but guilt never, otherwise there would have been no need for an atone- ment, for the absolute necessity of which Shedd argues so earnestly and so admirably. |
(7.) In Rom. v. 12—21, Paul asserts that the prin- ciple upon which we share in the righteousness of Christ is identical with that upon which we share in the guilt of Adam. If, therefore, we share in the guilt of Adam because we were as to essence numerically one with him, and hence, in the totality of the generic nature, guilty co-agents with him in the act of apostasy, it necessarily follows that we share in the righteousness of Christ,
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 101