113. II. Difficulties Of The Doctrine.

II. Difficulties Of The Doctrine.

We have found the arguments for native sinfulness in the sense of demerit entirely insufficient for its proof. With this result the question might be dismissed; but there are difficulties of the doctrine which should be adduced in its more direct refutation.

1. Demerit of a Mere Nature.—The native demerit is affirmed of the nature itself. The judicial ground of the divine judgment and penal wrath is placed in its own intrinsic sinfulness. The demerit is the sin of the nature with which we are born, and therefore must precede its development into personality. But a mere nature cannot be the subject of demerit; and guilt could as well be affirmed of a mere animal nature as of the human. Demerit must always be a personal fact. If it be said that the ground of the demerit lies in the impersonal nature, but that the amenability to punishment arises with the development of the nature into personality, then let the doctrine explain and justify the responsibility of the person for the nature with which he was born.

2. Demerit without Personal Agency.—This is the implication of the doctrine, and the principle is openly avowed and maintained. The higher realism, as previously reviewed, has the logical right of a denial—that is, consistently with itself it may deny the implication of demerit without personal agency. Indeed, the theory is openly) pronounced against the possibility of such demerit. But the mode of securing the personal agency and responsibility for the alleged native sinfulness we have previously shown to be utterly insufficient; so that, while this realistic theory may consistently with itself deny the implication of demerit without personal agency, it is as really involved in this implication as the representative theory. Native demerit, or the demerit of the nature with which one is born, is and must be wholly apart from one’s own agency. The only escape from this fact must be sought in the theory of the personal sinning of each soul in a pre-temporal existence. This theory was previously considered and needs no further attention here. The alleged demerit is the fifth link in a chain of five: 1. the sinning of Adam; 2. the immediate imputation of the guilt of his sin to the race; 3. the divine punishment of the race on the ground of this imputation; 4. the common native depravity as the consequence of that penal infliction; 5. the intrinsic sinfulness and demerit of the common native depravity.

We are all absolutely without any personal agency in a single link of this chain. It is not even pretended that we have any. The doctrine is, that the universal amenability to an eternal penal doom arises from the common native depravity passively inherited from Adam. If consistently with the divine justice there can be such native sinfulness, such penal desert of a mere nature passively received, then the absolute infliction of the deserved punishment upon all the race, and in an eternal penal doom, would be equally consistent with that justice. There can be no injustice in the infliction of deserved penalty. If such are the possibilities respecting the human race, there must be possible modes wherein the guilt of sin could be spread over the moral universe, and all intelligences without any agency of their own be justly whelmed in an eternal penal doom. There must be error in a doctrine which clearly points to such possibilities.

3. Demerit of Childhood.—This goes with the doctrine of an intrinsic sinfulness and demerit of the nature with which we are born. The doctrine has the fullest avowal. Hence, if it be true, the infant just born, yea, and before it is born, deserves an eternal penal doom, and might be justly so punished.

4. Demerit from Punishment.—This is not only an inevitable implication of the doctrine, but is openly avowed. Sin is punished with sin—the punishment of sin is sin. Native depravity is a judicial infliction on the ground of Adamic sin; and native depravity is the very seat and substance of native sin and demerit. But punishment, however just, cannot deserve further punishment. Penalty carries over no sin to the subject of its infliction. If punishment created the desert of further punishment there could be no arrest of the ever deepening doom. There is no such law of justice either human or divine.

5. An Unintelligible Sin.—What is the sin of a nature considered as demerit and amenability to punishment? Native depravity is the corruption of the moral nature, with its characteristic tendency to evil, and the source of actual sin. When we say the source of actual sin we cannot mean the agent in the actual sinning. All that we can mean is that it acts as an incitement of the personal agent toward sinning. The corrupt nature cannot itself sin; and the doctrine is, not that it sins and has demerit on that account, but that it is sin, and in a sense to have penal desert.

What is this intrinsic sin of our common native depravity? Is it definable as sin? Is its demerit a fixed quantity as the guilt of one sin, or an increasing quantity as the guilt of repeated sins? This subjective state is in itself ever the same irrespective of our personal agency; the same in our sleeping as in our waking hours. Does the demerit increase as one’s life lengthens, and in its unconscious hours just as in the conscious? Dr. Summers, himself an Arminian, after maintaining the doctrine of native sinfulness, says: “Thus the principle out of which the action springs is sinful, as well as the action itself. The unregenerate man is a sinner all the time; that is his character when asleep or at work, as well as when he is in the very act of transgressing. All jurisprudence is based on this.”^[554] The citation might be accepted as a statement of the sin of our nature, if this could be viewed as one sin, with a definite amount of guilt; but there is no light in the view as stated, and hence no explication of the real perplexities of the question.

^[554]Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 53, 54. This sin is intrinsic to the native corruption of our nature. It does not lie in the inheritance of this corrupt nature, nor in its incitements to evil-doing, nor in the actual sin which it may prompt, which is purely a personal sin committed in the exercise of a responsible personal agency. To locate this sin in any of these specified facts is to deny it to the corrupt nature, and thus to contradict the deepest principle of the doctrine. To locate it in the incitements of the corrupt nature to evil-doing is to deny its intrinsicalness to the nature. If the demerit of the nature is still maintained on the ground of these incitements they must be regarded as actual sins, for otherwise no demerit of the nature could arise from them. This requires that the nature be invested with the powers of a responsible personality, for only a person responsibly constituted can commit an actual sin. Thus we should be led away from a sinful nature to a sinning nature, and from a nature in itself to a nature invested with personality, and the doctrine of native demerit and damnableness would be wholly lost. An actual sin, with the desert of punishment in the sinner, is clearly open to the cognizance of the average mind, but the sinfulness of a mere nature, with the desert of punishment, is hidden in obscurity. Its utter unintelligibility disproves its reality.

6. The Ground of Election and Reprobation.—That native sinfulness furnishes the ground of election and reprobation is a perplexity for such Arminians as hold the doctrine rather than for

Calvinism. Indeed, as previously shown, it is not only in full accord with this system, but is a vital principle of the system in its prevalent infralapsarian form. Of course no Arminian can hold the special election and reprobation so fully wrought into Calvinism. No more can he consistently admit any sufficient ground for them. Such, therefore, as hold the doctrine of native sinfulness must either deny that it furnishes real and sufficient ground for election and reprobation, or attempt a modification of the doctrine in a manner to avoid this consequence. The latter is the course uniformly taken. The question is specially concerned with the decree of reprobation or preterition.

If our native depravity is of the nature of sin, and of sin in a sense to deserve an eternal penal doom, there could be no injustice in the infliction of the penalty. Penalty is never unjust, and never can be unjust, while within the limit of sinful demerit. Hence, out of this world of sinners, if it so please God, he might elect a part unto salvation and leave the rest to the just punishment of their sin. We might assume that his mercy was partial, but could not say that his justice was cruel or even partial. It does not appear in the doctrine, that justice asserted any unyielding claim for the punishment of a part, but only that it pleased the divine goodness to save a part, and to leave the rest to the just punishment of their sin. Such would have been the righteous doom of all, had it not pleased the divine love savingly to interpose in behalf of a part. This is the doctrine, and one that has received frequent expression in confessional symbols and individual utterance. If the doctrine of native sinfulness, with the desert of an eternal penal doom, be true, sublapsarian Calvinism is thereby furnished with real and sufficient ground for the doctrine of election and reprobation which it maintains. It is well for Arminians to see this, and to see it clearly. Some do thus see it. “Methodism clearly perceives that to admit that mankind are actually born into the world justly under condemnation is to grant the foundation of the whole Calvinistic scheme. Granted natal desert of damnation, there can be no valid objection to the sovereign election of a few out of the reprobate mass, or to limited atonement, irresistible grace, and final perseverance to secure the present and eternal salvation of the sovereignly predestinated number.”^{[555] [555]} Summers:Systematic Theology, vol. ii, p. 38. By the editor. In the way of seemingly, but only seemingly, adverse criticism, Mr. “Watson says: “It is an easy and plausible thing to say, in the usual loose and general manner of stating the sublapsarian doctrine, that the whole race having fallen in Adam, and become justly liable to eternal death, God might, without any impeachment of his justice, in the exercise of his sovereign grace, appoint some to life and salvation by Christ, and leave the others to their deserved punishment.”^[556] If the native sinfulness be accepted as a truth, the statement of the sublapsarian doctrine is surely easy enough because of its thorough ground in such sinfulness. Nor is such statement merely plausible or loose and general, but definite, consistent, and well grounded. In these words there is not the slightest dissent from Mr. Watson, and for the reason that in the citation he neither denies nor even questions the sufficiency of such native sinfulness as the ground of election and reprobation. It was in view of this fact that we qualified his statement as only a seemingly adverse criticism of this position.

^[556]Theological Institutes, vol. ii, p. 394. In accordance with all this, Mr. Watson proceeds at once to dispute the Calvinistic position by an open denial of the assumed native sinfulness. “But this is a false view of the case, built upon the false assumption that the whole race were personally and individually, in consequence of Adam’s fall, absolutely liable to eternal death. That very fact which is the foundation of the whole scheme, is easy to be refuted on the clearest authority of Scripture; while not a passage can be adduced, we may boldly affirm, which sanctions any such doctrine. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ That the death which is the wages or penalty of sin extends to eternal death, we have before proved. But ‘sin is the transgression of the law;’ and in no other light is it represented in Scripture, when eternal death is threatened as its penalty, than as the act of a rational being sinning against a law known or knowable, and as an act avoidable, and not forced or necessary.”^[557] As only such sin can be justly liable to eternal punishment, and as the human race, descended from Adam, had no part in the commission of any such sin previous to birth, therefore they could not be born with any sin amenable to an eternal penal doom. This is good and wholesome doctrine, and withal truly Arminian. It would be well for Arminians rigidly to adhere to it, and never to hold or maintain the contrary or any thing which implies the contrary. Their fundamental principles would thus be secure, and no open place would be yielded to the doctrine of election and reprobation.

^[557]Theological Institutes, vol. ii, pp. 394, 395.