RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Imputation Incapacity
ness to us. Rationalism almost ate the heart out of the Lutheran Churches; and the Reformed Churches were saved from the same fate only by the prompt extrusion of the Arminian party and the strengthening of their position by conflict with it. In particular, about the middle of the seventeenth century the " covenant " or " federal " method of exhibiting the plan of the Lord's dealings with men (see Cocceius, Johannes, and his School) began to find great acceptance among the Reformed Churches. There was nothing novel in this mode of conceiving truth. The idea was present to the minds of the Church Fathers and the Schoolmen; and it underlay Protestant thought, both Lutheran and Reformed, from the beginning, and in the latter had come to clear expression, first in Ursinus. But now it quickly became dominant as the preferable manner of conceiving the method of the divine dealing with men. The effect was to throw into the highest relief the threefold doctrine of imputation, and to make manifest as never before the dependency of the great doctrines of sin, satisfaction, and justification upon it.
About the same time a brilliant French professor, Josue de la Place (see Placeus, Jostja), of the Reformed school at Saumur, reduced 6. La Place all that could be called the imputation and Later of Adam's sin to his posterity simply Theologians to this — that because of the sin inand Schools, herent in us from our origin we are deserving of being treated in the same way as if we had committed that offense. This confinement of the effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity to the transmission to them of a sinful disposition — inherent sin — was certainly new in the history of Reformed thought : Andreas Rivetus (see Rivet, Andre) had no difficulty in collecting a long line of " testimonies " from the confessions and representative theologians explicitly declaring that men are accounted guilty in God's sight, both because of Adam's act of transgression imputed to them and of their own sinful disposition derived from him. The conflict of views was no doubt rendered sharper, however, by the prevalence at the time of the " Covenant theology " in which the immediate imputation of Adam's transgression is particularly clearly emphasized. Thus " immediate " and " mediate " imputation (for by the latter name La Place came subsequently to call his view) were pitted against each other as mutually exclusive doctrines: as if the question at issue were whether man stood condemned in the sight of God solely on account of his "adherent " sin, or solely on account of his " inherent " sin. The former of these doctrines had never been held in the Reformed Churches, since Zwingli, and the latter had never been held in them before La Place. From the first both "adherent" and "inherent" sin had been confessed as the double ground of human guilt; and the advocates of the " Covenant theology " were as far as possible from denying the guilt of " inherent " sin. La Place's innovation was as a matter of course condemned by the Reformed world, formally at the Synod of Charenton (1644-45) and in the Helvetic Consensus (1675) and by argument at the hands of the leading theologians —
Rivetus, Turretin, Maresius, Driessen, Leydecker, and Marck. But the tendencies of the time were in its favor and it made its way. It was adopted by theologians like Wyttenbach, Endemann, Stapfer, Roell, Vitringa, Venema; and after a while it found its way through Britain to America, where it has had an interesting history — forming one of the stages through which the New England Theology (q.v.) passed on its way to its ultimate denial of the quality of sin involving guilt to anything but the voluntary acts of a free agent; and finally becoming one of the characteristic tenets of the so-called " New School Theology " of the Presbyterian Churches. Thus it has come about that there has been much debate in America upon " imputation," in the sense of the imputation of Adam's sin, and diverse types of theology have been framed, especially among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, centering in differences of conception of this doctrine. Among the Presbyterians, for example, four such types are well marked, each of which has been taught by theologians of distinction. These are (1) the " Federalists, " characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of " immediate imputation," represented, for example, by Dr. Charles Hodge; (2) the " New School," characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of " mediate imputation," represented, for example, by Dr. Henry B. Smith; (3) the " Realistic," which teaches that all mankind were present in Adam as generic humanity, and sinned in him, and are therefore guilty of his and their common sin, represented, for example, by Dr. W G. T. Shedd; and (4) one which may be called the " Agnostic," characterized by an attempt to accept the fact of the transmission of both guilt and depravity from Adam without framing a theory of the mode of their transmission or of their relations one to the other, represented, for example, by Dr. R. W. Landis. See Adam; Atonement; Justification; Redemption; Satisfaction; Sin. Benjamin B. Waefield.
Bibliography: The literature of the subject is the literature of Original Sin, Atonement, and Justification (qq.v.). Special treatment is usually given also in the systems of doctrinal theology, especially of the Calvinistic type. Consult: A. Revetus, Opera, iii. 798 sqq., Rotterdam, 1560; R. Rueschi, Geschichte und Kritik der kirchlichen Lehrevom SiXndenfall, Leyden, 1801; C. Hodge, Theological Essays, pp. 128-217, New York, 1846; A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen, Zurich, 1854-56; W Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, pp. 371 sqq., Edinburgh, 1866; J. Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, pp. 279, 321-323, 334, 337, ib., 1867; G. P. Fisher, in the New Englander, July, 1868; J. Miiller, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, ii. 342 sqq., Edinburgh, 1868; T. J. Crawford, Doctrine of Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonement, pp. 181-183, 424, ib., 1871; R. W. Landis, The Doctrine of Original Sin as Received and Taught by the Churches, Richmond, 1884; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ii. 29, 42, 57-63, 192-194, New York, 1888; H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, ed. W. S. Karr, pp. 283-323, ib., 1890; R. V. Foster, Systematic Theology, pp. 408-413, Nashville, 1898; W. A. Brown, Christian Theology in Outline, pp. 285, 290-291, 311, 362, New York, 1906.
INCAPACITY: The state of being unqualified to receive holy orders. It exists in the case of unbaptized persons and women. As to the former, it is obvious that a person who is to hold an ecclesiastical office must be a member of the Church, and this
Incarnation Incense