096. I. Adamic Origin.
I. Adamic Origin.
1. Limitations of the Question of Origin.—These limitations arise from certain facts of depravity. One is, that it is native—a moral state in which we are born. Hence it cannot have its origin in any thing subsequent to our birth. “We thus see the error of accounting it to any such thing as evil example or education, or to the influence of environment. Such things may act upon our evil nature and quicken its tendencies into earlier and stronger activity, but cannot be the source of our depravity, because, while it is native, they can affect us only in our actual life. Another fact is that depravity is universal. Hence it cannot arise from any local or temporary source. The true source must be common to all men. Finally, depravity itself is intrinsically the same and one in all. Therefore its origin must be one, not many. The present thinking, the best philosophical thinking, forbids an unnecessary multiplication of causes, and for such a uniform and universal fact as native depravity could allow only one source.[481] [481]
2. Origin in the Adamic Fall.—The conditions of limitation respecting the origin of depravity are all met in the Adamic relations of the race. This is not the only case in which they are all met, but it is the most reasonable account of the common depravity, and the source to which the Scriptures lead us. They are all equally met in our relation to physical nature as contemporary with our birth, as common to all, and the same for all. The idea of a physical origin of moral evil, and of the evil tendencies of human nature, has widely prevailed. It is in the vast system of Brahmanism, and in the Greek philosophy. It flourished in the Gnosticism of the early Christian centuries. Its tendencies are always evil: to sensuality in one direction, and to extreme asceticism in the other. If matter is intrinsically evil and the inevitable source of corruption to the soul, then such was man’s state as originally created, and there is for him no deliverance in the present life. Such facts are not reconcilable with any true idea of God. But as a heresy in Christian theology the physical origin of moral evil is only a matter of history, and needs no present refutation. The conditions of limitation respecting the origin of depravity are also met m the relations of God to the soul. It could not be said that doctrinal opinion has never implicated the divine agency in the origin of depravity—not, indeed, by an immediate constitution of a corrupt nature in primitive man, but mediately by a determination of the Adamic fall. Such determination must be an implication of supralapsarian Calvinism. Happily, supralapsarianism is now almost wholly a matter of history. Neither by an original constitution of human nature, nor by any agency which determined the Adamic fall, could God be the author of such an evil as human depravity. His holiness and goodness declare it an absolute impossibility. The Adamic origin of depravity is thus rendered strongly probable. The three relations which we have named as meeting the limitations of the question complete the circle of such relations in even thinkable sources. It follows that, as the origin of depravity cannot be either in physical nature or in God, it must be in the Adamic fall.
3. Transmissible Effects of Adam’s Sin.—The effect of Adam’s sin in himself was the corruption of his own nature. No one can sin without detriment to his subjective moral state. The higher the state of holiness, the deeper the moral deterioration. There was the deeper consequence of evil in the case of Adam, who was created in holiness. Besides this more direct effect of his sin he suffered a deprivation of the Holy Spirit, whose presence gave to his subjective holiness its highest form. As previously shown, the consequence of this deprivation was the deeper depravation of his moral nature. The corruption of nature which Adam thus suffered must have been transmitted to his offspring. This result is determined by a law of nature, and as fixed a law as nature reveals. There is no need to assume that this law of transmission must rule in the case of such slight changes as may occur in the mere accidents of parental character, but it must rule in the case of so profound a change in the subjective moral state. There is no reference to this law in the case of either Cain or Abel, but there is a reference in the instance of Seth in that he was begotten in the likeness and image of his father (Genesis 5:3). The transmission of the Adamic likeness, even in his fallen state, is thus fully recognized. In this there is reason for us to find the origin of depravity in the Adamic fall.
4. Secular Consequences of the Adamic Fall.—In consequence of the Adamic sin and fall the race is involved in physical suffering and death. The record of such results is clearly given in the Scriptures (Genesis 3:16-19). With this text we may collate others in which the common mortality is more definitely attributed to the Adamic fall (Romans 5:15; Romans 5:17; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22). With this great fact so definitely given, we may include with it other forms of physical suffering, as expressed in the divine judgment upon the progenitors of the race. For the present we are concerned only with the facts of such consequences, without any respect to the law of their entailment. Nor is the fact itself in the least affected by any perplexities of interpretation which the texts may present. We may not be able to get the exact sense in which the earth was cursed and man subjected to wearying toil. We may think of great strength in primitive man as at once providentially given and guarded, and also of the garden prepared for him, with such conditions of fruitfulness as to yield an ample living without any requirement of wearying toil. We may also think of greatly changed conditions: a loss of strength in man, and the allotment of new fields, no longer prepared as a garden, but hard and rough in their primitive nature, and from which bread must be forced in the sweat of the face. But whatever the mode of the divine judgment upon man and the earth, it clearly conveys the sense of physical suffering and death in consequence of the Adamic fall.
5. Deeper Moral Consequence in Depravity.—The physical evils which the race suffers in consequence of the Adamic fall are connected with a deeper moral consequence. This connection is specially clear in the case of death. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). The sense is not merely that Adam was the first that sinned, but that in some deep sense universal sin and death are connected with his sin and fall. We have previously shown that universal actual sin has no rational account except through the common depravity of human nature. We may thus find the connection between the universal actual sin and the sin of Adam. The universal actual sin has its source in the common depravity, and the common depravity has its source in the sin of Adam. There is no other way of accounting for the universality of actual sin through his sin. Thus the corruption of Adam’s own nature through sin becomes the source of the common depravity there is a like connection of the common mortality which is also traced to the Adamic sin and fall. If human nature is not corrupted through the sin of Adam we should be born in the same state in which he was created, with equal fitness for a probationary economy and the opportunity of immortality. Thus the universality of death in consequence of the sin of Adam is mediated by the corruption of human nature through his sin. In the physical suffering and death entailed upon the race through the sin of Adam we thus see the deeper moral consequence in depravity.