103. IV. Objections To The Lower Realism.
IV. Objections To The Lower Realism. In addition to the objections presented in the discussion of this theory, a few special objections should be stated.
1. Implication of Seminal Guilt.—The theory clearly has this implication. The common guilt is charged to the account of a seminal existence in Adam when he committed the first sin, and solely on that ground. The development of the seminal entities then in him into a personal mode of existence is in no sense the ground or condition of the guilt. This is the theory. It follows that we must have been guilty in our seminal state. The mode of existence on which the guilt is grounded was then complete. If not guilty then, we could not be guilty now. The result utterly discredits the theory. There is no subject of guilt below personality; and the notion that all human souls, existing in Adam in a mere rudimentary mode, could in that state be guilty of his sin, and the subject of the divine wrath, is too preposterous for the utmost credulity.
2. Guilty of All Ancestral Sins.—This objection is the same in principle as one urged against the higher realism. It is as thoroughly valid in this case as in that, and equally weighs against the lower realism. In the inevitable logic of facts the theory has this consequence. It cannot be voided by declaring Adam a public person, while the relation of every subsequent father is merely individual. Such a declaration replaces the realistic ground of guilt with the representative—an entirely different ground, as we have previously pointed out. The surrender of a theory is a very poor way of defending it. Nor is there any escape through such a progenitorship of Adam that all souls existed in him, while only a part existed in any later parentage. It is not the totality of existence in Adam that is the ground of the alleged guilt, but the fact and mode of that existence. The mode is precisely the same in all subsequent parentages as in Adam himself. Benjamin existed in Jacob, and Jacob in Isaac in the very mode in which each existed in Adam. If the principle is valid in the one case, so is it in all others. If guilty of Adam’s sin because then seminally in him, we must be guilty of all the sins of our ancestors committed while seminally in them. Augustine saw this consequence, and admitted its probable reality, though with hesitation.[517] Well might he hesitate to accept the result of such an accumulation of sin upon every human soul. The theory which inevitably involves such a consequence must be false.
[517]
3. Repentance and Forgiveness of the Race in Adam.—If Adam repented, as generally agreed, he was graciously forgiven. Then, if so really one with him as to be sharers in his sin, on the same ground we should equally share his repentance. If we still existed in him in the same manner as when he sinned, no reason can be given why we should not Just as fully share his repentance as his sin. It follows that, on such a repentance, our own in the same moral sense in which it was his, we should have been graciously forgiven with him. Why then should native depravity be inflicted as a punishment on the ground of a common participation in the guilt of Adam’s sin, when the whole ground of its infliction was removed before the propagation of the race? No reason can be given for such infliction; which, however, the theory fully holds. Indeed, all the reason of the case is against it. It is plain, in the view of such facts, that the implications of the theory cannot be adjusted to its principles. Hence these implications witness against its truth. The theory of a realistic oneness of the race with Adam in no form of it offers sufficient ground for a common participation in his sin, or for the judicial infliction of native depravity upon the race.