MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE IMPUTATION [929]
All Augustinians and Calvinists agree in the doctrine of total depravity and original sin in consequence of Adam's fall; but differences arose among them concerning the imputation of Adam's sin and guilt to his posterity. The majority advocated the realistic theory of an actual, though impersonal and unconscious, participation of the whole human race in the fall of Adam as their natural organic head, who by his individual transgression vitiated the generic human nature, and transmitted it in this corrupt state by physical generation to his descendants. This, the old Augustinian view, was renewed by the Reformers. Others, since the seventeenth century, adopted the federal theory of a vicarious legal representation of mankind by Adam, in virtue of an assumed covenant of works made with him by the Sovereign Creator, to the effect that Adam should stand a moral probation in behalf of all his descendants (acting like a guardian for children yet unborn, or like a representative for future constituents), and that his act of obedience or disobedience, with all its consequences, should be judicially imputed to them, or accounted theirs in law. [930] Still others combined the two theories so as to make imputation rest both on the moral ground of participation and on the legal ground of representation.
In connection with this doctrine of hereditary sin there arose among the Calvinists of the seventeenth century a controversy about immediate or antecedent, and mediate or consequent imputation. [931] The theory of immediate imputation makes all descendants of Adam responsible for his disobedience as participants in actu, and condemns them independently of, and prior to, native depravity and personal transgression, so that hereditary guilt precedes hereditary sin. The theory of mediate imputation makes inherent depravity derived from Adam, and this alone, the ground of imputation and condemnation (vitiositas præcedit imputationem). The school of Montauban, Rivet of Leyden, the elder Turretin of Geneva, Heidegger of Zurich, Garissol, Maresius, and the supralapsarians and federalists advocated the former, some exclusively, some in connection with mediate imputation. La Place (Placeus) of Saumur denied immediate imputation of a foreign sin as arbitrary and unjust, and allowed only a mediate imputation, but claimed to be nevertheless in full harmony with Calvin's teaching on this subject.
The Reformed national Synod at Charenton, near Paris, in 1645, rejected the theory of La Place (yet without calling him to an account or naming him), at least so far as it restricts the nature of original sin to the mere hereditary corruption of Adam's posterity. In vindication of the decree of the Synod, Rivet prepared a collection of passages on imputation (many of them very general and inconclusive) from Reformed and Lutheran confessions and the writings of Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, and others.
THE CONSENSUS FORMULA.
Several years after the leaders of the Saumur theology had passed from the stage of history it was thought desirable by some of the prominent divines of Switzerland to protect their Churches against possible danger from the new doctrines of Saumur, which were imported through writings and students, and met with considerable sympathy, especially in Geneva. It was feared--and not without reason-- that, however innocent in themselves, they might lead, by legitimate logical development, to an ultimate abandonment of the system of Calvinism.
Hence the new Formula of orthodoxy which forms the subject of this section, was agreed upon by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of Zurich, Basle, and Geneva, and adopted in other Reformed cantons as a binding rule of public teaching for ministers and professors. Its authority was confined to Switzerland, and even there it could not maintain itself longer than about half a century. French ministers, who fled to Lausanne after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, refused to sign it; the great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg (1686), and afterwards the Kings of Prussia and England, and the Corpus Evangelicorum at Ratisbon (1722), urged the Reformed cantons, in the interest of peace and union, to abandon the Formula. It gradually lost its hold upon the Swiss churches, and was allowed to die and be buried without mourners. Nevertheless the theology which it represents continues to be advocated by a respectable school of strict Calvinists in Europe, and especially in America.
The Helvetic Consensus Formula was not so much intended to be a new confession of faith, as an explanatory appendix to the former Confessions (resembling in this respect the Saxon Visitation Articles, which were an appendix to the Lutheran Formula of Concord, to guard the churches of Saxony against the dangers of crypto-Calvinism). The document does not breathe the fresh and bracing air of faith and religious experience which characterize the Confessions of the Reformation period. It is the product of scholasticism, which formularized the faith of Calvin into a stiff doctrinal system, and anxiously surrounded it with high walls to keep out the light of freedom and progress. Nevertheless it is more liberal than is generally represented and than might be expected from the bigotry and polemical violence of the seventeenth century. Heidegger was personally mild and modest; he spoke the truth in love, and resisted the pressure of extremists in Switzerland and Holland, who suspected even him of unsoundness, and desired a formal condemnation of the schools not only of Saumur but also of Cocceius and Cartesius. Instead of this, he speaks in the preface of the Formula, respectfully and kindly, of the Saumur theologians, and calls them venerable brethren in Christ, who built on the same foundation of faith, and whose peculiar doctrines are not condemned as heresies, but simply disapproved. [932]
The Formula consists of a preface and twenty-six canons or articles, which clearly state the points of difference between strict Calvinism and Salmurianism. They teach the following points:
1. The literal inspiration of the Scriptures and the integrity of the traditional Hebrew text of the Old Testament, including the vowels as well as consonants; so that we need not resort to manuscripts, translations, and conjectures. [933] Art. 1-3. Against Cappel.
This attempt to canonize the Hebrew vowels gave great offense to Claude, Daillé, and other French Calvinists; and Heidegger explained to Turretin that the object of the Formula was only to guard the authority and integrity of the original text, and not to decide grammatical and critical questions. But in its natural effect such a mechanical theory of inspiration, which, to be of any practical use, requires a perpetual literary miracle in the preservation of the text, would supersede all textual criticism, and make the Targums, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and other ancient versions, worse than useless.
2. God decreed from eternity, first, to create man innocent; second, to permit (permittere) the fall; third, to elect some to salvation, and thus to reveal in them his mercy, but to leave the rest in the corrupt mass (alios vero in corrupta massa relinquere), and to devote them to eternal perdition. (This is clearly the Augustinian infralapsarianism.) In the gracious decree of election Christ himself is included, as the Mediator and our first-born Brother. The doctrine of an antecedent hypothetical will or intention of God [934] to save all men on condition of faith is rejected as unscriptural and as involving God in imperfection and contradiction. Art. 4-6. Against Amyraut.
3. The covenant of works made by God with Adam before the fall, promising to him eternal life (symbolized by the tree of life in Paradise), on condition of perfect obedience. Art. 7-9. Against Amyraut.
4. Immediate imputation of Adam's sin to all his posterity who fell in him, their representative head (in ipso ut capite et stirpe), and forfeited the promised blessing of the covenant of works. Man is thus doubly condemned, for his participation in the sin of Adam and for his hereditary depravity; to deny the former makes the latter doubtful. [935] Art. 10-12. Against La Place, not because he asserted mediate or consequent imputation (which the Formula likewise teaches), but because he excluded the other.
5. Limited atonement. Christ died only for the elect, and not indiscriminately for all men. [936] The infinite value and inherent sufficiency of Christ's satisfaction is not denied, but the divine intention and the practical efficiency are limited, and adjusted to the particularism of the decree of election. Art. 13-16. Against Amyraut.
6. The actual vocation to salvation never was absolutely general (numquam absolute universalis), but was confined to Israel in the old dispensation and to Christians in the new (Matt. xi. 25; Eph. i. 9). God's revelation in nature and providence (Rom. i. 19, 20) is insufficient for purposes of salvation, though it leaves the heathen without excuse for rejecting even this remnant of the knowledge of God. The external call of God through his "Word is always serious, and so far effective that it works salvation in the elect, and makes the unbelief of the reprobate inexcusable. [937] Art. 17-20. Against Amyraut, who extended the vocation beyond the limits of the visible Church and the ordinary means of grace.
7. The natural as well as moral inability of man to believe the gospel of himself. [938] This twofold inability has its ground in the depravity of our nature, from which only the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit can deliver us (1 Cor. ii. 14; 2 Cor. iv. 6). Art. 21, 22. Against Amyraut.
8. A twofold covenant of God with man--the covenant of works made with Adam and through him with all men, but set aside by the fall, and the covenant of grace made only with the elect in Christ, which is forever valid, and exists under two economies, the Jewish and the Christian. The saints of the Old Testament were saved by the same faith in the Lamb of God as we are (Apoc. xiii. 8; Heb. xiii. 8; John xiv. 1); for out of Christ there is no salvation. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is revealed in the Old Testament in words, figures, and types, sufficiently for salvation, though not as clearly as in the New. For no one can believe in Christ without the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity. Amyraut's doctrine of three essentially different covenants--natural, legal, and evangelical, with different degrees of knowledge and piety--is disapproved. Art. 23-25.
The concluding article (the 26th) prohibits the teaching of new or doubtful and unauthorized doctrines which are contrary to the Word of God, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and other Reformed symbols.
[913] Author of Concilii Tridentini Anatome historico-theologica; Enchiridion Biblicum; Historia sacra patriarcharum; and Histoire du Papisme.
[914] Author of the Institutio theologicæ elenchthicæ (1679-85), which still keeps its place among the best systems of Calvinistic theology. New edition, Edinburgh and New York, 1847, in four volumes. His son, John Alphonsus (1671-1737), Professor of Church History in Geneva, was inclined to Arminianism, and advocated toleration. See Schweizer, Centraldogmen, Vol. II. pp. 784 sqq.
[915] Aymon Tous les Synodes nationaux des églises réformées de France. A 1a Haye, 1710, Vol. II. pp. 183, 298; Schweizer, 1.c. pp. 229 sqq.
[916] See p. 851, and Schweizer's comparison of the two documents, Vol. II. pp. 532 sqq.
[917] 'Arcanum punctationis revelatum,' added to his Commentarii et notæ criticæ in Vetus Testamentum, Amst. 1689. Cappel wrote this tract in 1622, and sent the MS. to the elder Buxtorf. of Basle (d. 1629), who returned it with the advice to keep back his view. It was first published anonymously by Erpenius at Leyden, 1624. Twenty years afterwards Buxtorf the younger (d. 1664) attacked it in his Tractatus de punctorum origine, antiquitate et autoritate, Basil. 1648. Against this Cappel wrote his Vindiciæ Arcani punctat. revel., but they were not published till 1689, by his son, Jacques C., in an Appendix to his Commentary. His views on the late origin of the Hebrew vowels were anticipated by rabbinical scholars, Abn-Ezra (d. 1174) and Elias Levita (d. 1549).
[918] Critica sacra, etc., Paris, 1650, folio; another edition, by Vogel, in three volumes, Halle, 1775-86. The work was finished October, 1634, but the printing was delayed by the opposition of the Protestants until his son, Jean Cappel, who seceded to the Roman Church, procured a royal privilege for its publication in Paris.