(a) It is urged that St. Paul's language requires ns to conceive of the human race as in Adam potentially, in the same sense as the oak is in the acorn. Hence, for what he did, we may be counted responsible. The race, not the individual, is the true unit ; it is with this unit that God deals. Thus, e.g., David sinned in numbering Israel, but his people were the sufferers from the divine punishment. The words of our Lord in Lk 13*"^ suggest to us that there is such a thing as Tiational responsibility, apart from the guilt of individuals. Most apposite of all, Levi is said to have paid tithes ' through Abraham ' (He !'■ '"). And in this conception of the solidarity of mankind there is, beyond question, a profound trutli which is becomin" more intelligently and sincerely ac- cepted as the social teaching of the Incarnation is beings opened out. ' As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Co 15--), are words which point to the unity of the human race as the root of the universality both of sin and of redemption. But we must be careful not to state this so as to do violence to our God-given sense of justice. This is the fault, e.g., of teaching like that of Jonathan Edwards, who spoke of a psychological no less than a physical unity be- tween Adam and his posterity. Ultimately based, as in Augustine, on a mistranslation of Ro 5'^ (in quo as the rendering of iif> i) and on the adoption in the Vulg. of the word imputare, familiar from its use in the courts of Roman law, this teacliing may readily become either ultra-mystical or ultra- rationalistic. It becomes ultra-mystical, if the unity of the human race be so spoken of as to conceal the all important fact that it is only for a person that morality has any intelligible mean- ing. It becomes ultra - rationalistic, wlien the [ihrases ' imputation of sin ' and the correlative ■ imputation of righteousness ' are used as if sin and righteousness were transferable from one per- son to another. Sin is predicable only of a person, not of human nature ; and the warning of Ezekiel, 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die,' needs to be ever kept in view. St. Paul does not teach that we are accomplices in Adam's sin or partakers of his guilt without a cooperation of our own will, although it be at the same time awfully true that we inherit from him a degraded nature. The abiding truth in tlie interpretation given by Augustine of St. Paul's teaching as to the Fall, is the truth of the unity of mankind. In this Adam is rinroi ToO y.4\\ovTOi.
[h) Again, the effect of Adam's fall upon his posterity has been explained by speaking of Adam a,a representative of the race. ''The covenant was male with Adam as a public person, not with himself only, but for his posterity.' But the ques- tion arises. How could Adam, in justice, bind his posterity to a covenant of which they were not cognizant? A federal compact of this sort could only bind us, if we had empowered Adam to act on our behalf. And if it be urged that in Adam's case we should have done the same as he, and therefore may justly be punished for what he did, it may be replied that this is a gratuitous assump-
* See for a fuller claosiflcatiOD, 6oh&ff in Lange's Rrnnana (Eng. tr. p. 191).
tion, which goes perilously near to depriving th« original transgression of moral blame by repre- senting it as inevitable. Here is an important consideration which must not be overlooked. All profitable speculation on the subject of the Fall must recognize frankly its voluntary character. Adam was not necessitated to act as he did ; otherwise his action would not involve moral responsibility.
(c) We come, then, to the view which is at once most widely accepted and most consonant to all the facts. It is, substantially, the view expounded by John of Damascus. We inherit from our first parents a degraded nature, so de- graded that it is for us much liarder to overcome sin tlian it was for Adam. For this inherited depravity of nature we are not responsible ; we have inherited it in spite of ourselves. Hence the world is in a ' state of ruin,' and can be reme- died only through grace. But we are not, there- fore, guilty ; guilt is incurred ordy when the evil is voluntarily embraced, when we take up Adam's sin by repeating it, as it were, in our own persons. The rule of Augustine, Peccatum poena peccati, continually receives verification. Coleridge has pressed this view somewhat further. ' It belongs," he says, ' to the very essence of the doctrine that in respect of original sin every man is the adequate representative of all men' {Aids to Reflection, p. 194). And he holds that Adam's fall is a typical experience repeated afresh in every son of Adam. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. The cor- ruption, he urges, ' must be self-originated.' There is an important sense in which this is true ; but it is not the whole truth. It is deficient in recog- nition of the far-reaching character of the first sin. We are not at all in the same spiritual condition as that of tlie first man ; we do not enter on the conflict with e^dl on the same terms. Our whole attitude to God is different from that of Adam, although we be still 'sons of God.' As the schoolmen put it, in the case of Adam the person corrupted the nature ; with us it is the nature which corrupts the person. Man is still free, but man is sick with a sickness which is dis- pleasing to the All-pure ; and for healin" of this sickness only a supernatural remedy will suffice. As our Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. also Mt 15'"), the real seat of sin is ■«'ithin, the heart is the seat of the moral life (cf. Ps 78*', Pr 4'-'^), although the translation of thought into act involves a fresh and distinct step in responsi- bility.* The advocates of the more rigorous Au^stinian doctrine have been accustomed to designate this view as serai-Pelagianism ; but it is free from the essential fault of the teaching of Pelagius, on which we say a final word.