(b) It is with the presence, guilt, and power of sin in individual experience and racial history, as the human need which the Divine grace in Christ meets, that Christian theology is alone concerned, and all other questions of the origin of sin or death are speculative, and not practical, and should be assigned the secondary place that properly belongs to them.
(c) Guided by these two considerations, we may lastly ask the question. How much remains of this doctrine for our modern Christian thought? (1) While the unity of the human race has not been demonstrated by science, this theory is not at all improbable, and so descent from one pair of an- cestors is not incredible. (2) While death as physical dissolution is proved by science to have been antecedent to man's appearance on earth, and while death seems a natural necessity for man as a physical organism, we need not try to justify St. Paul by assuming either that God, anticipating human sin, introduced death as its penalty into the very structure of the world at the Creation, or that, had man not sinned, he would so have developed morally and spirituallj" as to have transcended the natural necessity of death, and have attained im- mortality (because these speculations have no con- tact witli experience). But we may recognize that for him death was not physical dissolution merely, but death in its totality as it is for the human con- sciousness, and may press the question. Can it be denied that the terror and darkness of death for the mind and heart of man are due in large measure to his sense of guilt, and the effects of sin on his reason, conscience, and spirit? Between death as such an experience and sin we can even to-day admit that there is a connexion. (3) While the common assumption that the savage represents primitive man is unAvarranted, and we may infer that, since man's mental, moral, and spiritual de- velopment in history proves the great distinction between him in his natural endowments and all the lower animals, man was even at the earliest stage of that development already far removed from the brute, yet all speculation as to what he originally was is precarious, as it rests on no solid foundation of assured knowledge. (4) While the dispute as regards the inheritance of acquired characters does
not directly affect Christian thought (as it has yet to be proved that the laws of physical and mental or moral inheritance must be identical), yet the Christian theologian is bound to admit that the resemblances we do find between parents and children may be explained by social as much as by physical heredity, by the influence of the moral environment in youth as much as by the inheritance at birth of the moral characteristics of parents. W^hile the writer is not convinced thatTennant has proved his contention, that the appetites and im- pulses of the child are entirely natural, and that the factor of heredity may be excluded from the origin of sin in the indiAddual, he has at least com- pelled a reconsideration of the whole question. The sin in the race does affect the development of each member of it whether by social or by physical hereditj- ; but when, where, or how sin first entered we do not know, for that neither can man discover nor has God revealed.
Literature. — In addition to the authorities cited throughout the art., see J. S. Candlish, The Biblical Doctrine ojSiu, 1S93; J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, new ed., 1S95 ; H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 1911 ; J. Orr, God's Image in Man and its Defacement in the Lioht of Modern Denials, 1905 ; W. E. Orchard, Modern Theories of Sin, 1909 ; F. J. Hall, Evolution and the Fall, 1910.
Alfred E. Garvie. FALLING AWAY.— See Apostasy and Anti- christ.
FALSE PROPHET.— See APOCALYPSE.
FAMILY.— 1. The idea of 'family' is repre- sented in the NT by Trarptd, oikos, and oUta. — (a) Trarptd is used in Lk 2* for 'lineage,' 'descendants' (of David); in Ac 3^ (in plural) for 'races' of mankind ; and in Eph 3^^, Avhere there is a play on words between Trarrip and its derivative irarpid : ' the Father, from Avhom all fatherhood (RV text : ' every family,' AV wrongly : 'the whole family') in heaven and earth is named.' Though 'family' is here the literal translation, yet, since the English Avord ' family ' is not derived from ' father,' the above paraphrase suggested by J. Armitage Robinson (Com. in loc), Avho here folloAVS the Syriac and the Latin Vulgate, is best, and over- comes the difficulty presented to the English reader by the existence of ' families ' in heaven, in opposition to Mt 22^. Fatherhood, in a real sense, there must be in heaven, and it is ' named ' from God the Father. Thackeray, indeed, suggests [The Belation of St. Paid to Contemporary Jewish Thought, 1900, p. 148 f.) that orders of angels are meant, and he quotes a Rabbinical phrase, ' His family the angels'; but 'families' (plural) of angels are not mentioned, and the suggestion is hardly necessary. Another way out of the diflB- culty is seen in the v.l. (parpia ( = cppdrpa), i.e. ' tribe,* but this is an obvious gloss Avhich spoils the sense. Cf. irarpidpxv^ in He 'i* ■ Abraham the ' father of the whole family of faith ' (Westcott) ; the AA-ord is used of David and of the sons of Jacob in Ac 2^ 7^