4.01. Man's Creation

Man’s Creation Preliminary Considerations

Anthropology (anthrōpou logos)¹[Note: 1. ἀνθρώπου λόγος = a word or discourse about man (kind)] includes the topics that relate to man as created and holy and as apostate and sinful. It excludes those relating to man as regenerate and sanctified because these belong to redemption, which is a special provision not contained in creation. Man’s endowment by creation provided for his actual holiness and his possible apostasy, but not for his recovery from apostasy. Anthropology comprises only what man is and becomes under the ordinary arrangements of the Creator: what he is by creation and what he makes himself by self-determination. Man’s creation, primitive state, probation, apostasy, original sin, and its transmission are anthropological topics. Anthropology is principally concerned with the doctrine of sin, not because man is ideally and originally a sinner, but because he remained holy but a short time, and consequently his history, apart from redemption, is that of moral evil and its development.

Respecting man’s creation, Westminster Confession 4.2 teaches that “God created man male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls.” The first part of this statement is supported by Genesis 1:27 : “Male and female created he them.” The second part is supported by 1:26: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”; by 2:7: “God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul”; by Ecclesiastes 12:7 : “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it”; and by Matthew 10:28 : “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” In this statement, two particulars are to be marked. First, that man is bisexual: “God created man male and female.” This implies that the idea of man is incomplete if either the male or the female be considered by itself in isolation from the other. The two together constitute the human species. A solitary male or female individual would not be the species man nor include it nor propagate it. In Milton’s phrase: “Two great sexes animate the world.” The angels are sexless. Like man, they were created “with reasonable and immortal souls,” but unlike him, they were not “created male and female”: “They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God” (Matthew 22:30). Angels being sexless are not a race or species of creatures. They were created one by one, as distinct and separate individuals. This is proved by the fact that they do not have a common character and history; some remain holy and some lapse into sin.

Second, that the body is of a different nature and substance from the soul: “God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (nepeš ḥayyâ),²[Note: 2. ðÆôÆùÑ çÇéÌÈä] a breath or soul of life (Genesis 2:7). According to this statement, man is composed of a material part resulting from the vivification of the dust of the ground by creative energy and of an immaterial part resulting from the spiration or inbreathing of God. The Creator first enlivens inorganic matter into a body and then creates a rational spirit which he infuses into it. The same difference between body and soul is taught in Ecclesiastes 12:7 : The “dust” returns to the earth, and the “spirit” returns to God. Christ “commends his spirit into God’s hands” and “and gave up the spirit” (Luke 23:46). Stephen said, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). “Jacob gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost” (Genesis 49:33). Job exclaims, “O that I had given up the ghost” (Job 10:18). “The hope of the wicked shall be as the giving up of the ghost” (11:20). “She has given up the ghost” (Jeremiah 15:9). In Genesis 1:20 God says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life [lit., let the waters swarm a swarm of the soul of life (nepeš ḥayyâ)].”³[Note: 3. ðÆôÆùÑ çÇéÌÈä] And in 1:21 it is said that “God created every living creature that moves [lit., God created every living soul of life that creeps]” (see also 1:24). The irrational animal is here denominated a “soul of life” as man is; but it is not added, as in the case of man, that God “breathed” the “soul of life” into him. On the contrary, the origin of animals is associated with the material world alone. When God creates man, he addresses himself: “Let us make man in our image” (1:26). But when he creates animals, he addresses the inanimate world: “Let the waters bring forth the moving creature” (1:20); “let the earth bring forth the living creature” (1:24). The “soul of life” in the instance of the animal is only the animal soul, which is physical and material in its nature, and perishes with the body of which it is the vital principle. The “soul of life” in the instance of the man is a higher principle, the rational soul, which was inbreathed by the Creator and made in his image. Hence it is said in Ecclesiastes 3:21 that “the spirit (rûaḥ)⁴[Note: 4. øåÌçÇ] of man goes upward,” and “the spirit (rûaḥ)⁵[Note: 5. øåÌçÇ] of the beast goes downward to the earth.”

Theories of the Mode of Man’s Creation

Three theories have been formed of the mode of man’s creation: (1) preexistence, (2) traducianism, and (3) creationism.

Preexistence teaches that all human souls were created in the beginning of creation and before the creation of Adam. Each individual human soul existed in an antemundane state and is united with a human body by ordinary generation. This theory found some support in Plato’s speculations respecting intuitive knowledge as the relics of a preexistent state of the soul. Some of the Jewish rabbinic schools adopted it, and Origen endeavored, unsuccessfully, to give it currency in the Christian church. Müller, in his work entitled Sin, has revived it in a modified form. He assumes, not an antetemporal but a supratemporal state, in which the soul existed and the origin of sin occurred. The fall of man was not in a time before time, but is timeless. This is virtually the same as Kant’s conception of sin as a noumenon or thing in itself, which is always timeless and spaceless, in distinction from a phenomenon, which always occurs in space and time. Philippi (Doctrine 3.96) contends that Müller’s view is virtually that of preexistence. The propagation of the body still leaves the ego preexistent.

Preexistence confines the idea of species to the body. As this is propagated, it is derived out of a common physical nature. The body, consequently, cannot be older than that physical human nature which was created on the sixth day. The spirit, on the other hand, was created prior to the sixth day. The human spirit is purely individual, like that of an angel. (See supplement 4.1.1.)

Traducianism applies the idea of species to both body and soul. Upon the sixth day, God created two human individuals, one male and one female, and in them also created the specific psychico-physical nature from which all the subsequent individuals of the human family are procreated both psychically and physically. Hase (Hutterus redivivus §79) represents this theory as having been adopted by Tertullian, Augustine, and the elder Protestant divines, in the interest of the stricter theory of original sin. Hagenbach (§§55, 106) says that Tertullian was an earnest advocate of traducianism; that Augustine and Gregory the Great express themselves doubtfully and “with reserve respecting creationism”; and that “traducianism was professed not only by heterodox writers like Apollinaris, but by some orthodox theologians like Gregory of Nyssa.” The writer in the Middle Ages who maintains traducianism with most decision is Bishop Odo of Cambray. His treatise entitled Original Sin has received little attention even from the historians of doctrine, though it is marked by great profundity and acumen.

Neander (1.615) describes the traducianism of Tertullian in the following terms:

It was his opinion, that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind; that the soul of the first man was the fountain head of all human souls, and that all varieties of individual human nature are but different modifications of that one spiritual substance. Hence the whole nature became corrupted in the original father of the race, and sinfulness is propagated at the same time with souls. Although this mode of apprehending the matter, in Tertullian, is connected with his sensuous habits of conception, yet this is by no means a necessary connection. This last remark of Neander is important. Bellarmine claims Augustine as a creationist. Melanchthon and Klee reckon him among traducianists. Gangauf says that he was undecided. Delitzsch (Biblical Psychology §7) asserts that he was wrestling with the subject all his life. Luther, according to Delitzsch, was at first inclined to traducianism, being urged by Bugenhagen, but afterward distinguished the creation and infusion of the soul into the body as the second conception, from the first bodily conception. Smith (Theology, 168) asserts that “traducianism, on the whole, has been the most widely spread theory.” (See supplement 4.1.2.) Turretin (9.12.6) remarks as follows respecting the traducian view:

Some are of opinion that the difficulties pertaining to the propagation of original sin are best resolved by the doctrine of the propagation of the soul (animae traducem); a view held by not a few of the fathers and to which Augustine frequently seems to incline. And there is no doubt that by this theory all the difficulty seems to be removed; but since it does not accord with Scripture or with sound reason and is exposed to great difficulties, we do not think that recourse should be had to it.

Maresius (De Marets), a Calvinistic theologian whose opinions had great weight, speaks as follows respecting traducianism:

Although Augustine seems sometimes to have been undecided (fluctuasse aliquando) respecting the origin of the soul; whether it is by immediate creation or by propagation; he is fixed in the opinion that original sin cannot be transmitted otherwise than by propagation. And he is far more inclined (longe pronior) to the last mentioned doctrine, nay, to speak truly, he constantly held it (constanter retinuit), in order to save the justice of God; because it is difficult to show the justice of infusing a soul newly created and destitute of sin and having no guilt of its own into a vitiated body, by whose concupiscence and lust it is stained and burdened, is exposed to many and great evils in this life, and condemned to everlasting punishment hereafter (Augustine, Letter 28.137; Concerning the Soul; and Jansenius, Concerning the State of Nature 1.15). This was the opinion of Apollinaris and of nearly all the Western divines in Jerome’s day and is defended by Marnixius, Sohnius, and Combachius, truly great divines of our communion; to which, if this were the place to lay down the statements, I should not be much disinclined (valde alienus). (Maresius, Elenctic Theology, controversy 11)

Charnock (Discourse 1), after remarking that wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, and other accidents of the soul, are not propagated, adds: “I do not dispute whether the soul were generated or not. Suppose the substance of it was generated by the parents, yet those more excellent qualities were not the result of them,” that is, of the parents. Hooker (Ecclesiastical Polity 2.7), also, speaks doubtfully: “Of some things, we may very well retain an opinion that they are probable and not unlikely to be true, as when we hold that men have their souls rather by creation, than propagation.” (See supplement 4.1.3.)

Creationism confines the idea of species to the body. In this respect, it agrees with the theory of preexistence, the difference relating only to the time when the soul is created. Creationism and preexistence both alike maintain that the human soul is individual only and never had a race-existence in Adam. The creationist holds that God on the sixth day created two human individuals, one male and one female, and in them also created the specific physical nature from which the bodies of all the subsequent individuals were procreated, the soul in each instance being a new creation ex nihilo and infused into the propagated body.

Hase (Hutterus redivivus, 79) represents this view as having been favored by Aristotle and adopted by Ambrose, Jerome, Pelagius, Bellarmine, and Calixtus. Hagenbach (§106) mentions as advocates of creationism Lactantius, Hilary, and Jerome and remarks (§173) that this theory gained gradually upon traducianism in the Middle Ages. John of Damascus, Anselm, and Aquinas were creationists. Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, 12) says that the Lutheran theologians almost without exception adopted traducianism, while the Reformed divines with very few exceptions maintained creationism. Creationism has been the most common view during the last two centuries. The choice must be made between traducianism and creationism, since the opinion that man as to his soul existed before Adam has no support from revelation. The Bible plainly teaches that Adam was the first man; and that all finite spirits existing before him were angels. The question between the traducianist and the creationist is this: When God created the first two human individuals, Adam and Eve, did he create in and with them the invisible substance of all the succeeding generations of men, both as to the soul and body or only as to the body? Was the human nature that was created in Adam and Eve simple or complex? Was it physical solely, or was it psychico-physical? Had the human nature in the first pair two sides or only one? Was provision made for propagating out of the specific nature deposited in Adam individuals who would be a union of body and soul or only a mere body without a soul?⁶[Note: 6. WS: Augustine describes man as the union of spiritual and corporeal substance (Letter 137 to Volusianus): “Persona hominis mixtura est animae et corporis, duarum rerum commixtio: unius incorporeae, et alterius corporeae; nam si anima in sua natura non fallatur, incorpoream se esse comprehendit” [AG: In the person of man is a mixture of soul and body, a commixture of two things: the one incorporeal and the other corporeal. For if the soul is not mistaken regarding its own nature, it comprehends itself to be incorporeal]; “Quicquid enim corpus non est, et tamen aliquid est, jam recte spiritus dicitur” [AG: For whatever is not body, but nevertheless is something, indeed is rightly called “spirit”]; On the Literal Meaning ofGenesis 12:7:16; cf. Gangauf, Psychology of Augustine, 101.]

The question, consequently, between the parties involves the quantity of being that was created on the sixth day, when God is said to have created “man.” The traducianist asserts that the entire invisible substance of all the generations of mankind was originated ex nihilo by that single act of God mentioned in Genesis 1:27, by which he created “man male and female.” The creationist asserts that only a part of the invisible substance of all the generations of mankind was created by that act, namely, that of their bodies; the invisible substance which constitutes their souls being created subsequently by as many distinct and separate creative acts as there are individual souls. (See supplement 4.1.4.)

Traducianism and creationism agree with each other in respect to the most difficult point in the problem, namely, a kind of existence that is prior to the individual existence. The creationist concedes that human history does not start with the birth of the individual man. He does not attempt to explain original sin with no reference to Adam. He maintains that the body and physical life of the individual is not a creation ex nihilo in each instance, but is derived from a common physical nature that was originated on the sixth day. In so doing, the creationist concedes existence in Adam, to this extent. But this race-mode of human existence, which is prior to the individual mode, is the principal difficulty in the problem, and in conceding its reality as to the body the creationist carries a common burden with the traducianist. For it is as difficult to think of an invisible existence of the human body in Adam as to think of an invisible existence of the human soul in him. In reality, it is even more difficult; because the body of an individual man, as we now know it, is visible and tangible, while his soul is not. And an invisible and intangible existence in Adam is more conceivable than a visible and tangible. In discussing either traducianism or creationism, it is important to define the idea of substance. The term, in this connection, does not imply either extension or figure. It is taken in its etymological and metaphysical sense to denote that entity which stands under phenomena and is the base for them. As in theology, the divine “substance” or nature is unextended and formless yet a real entity, so in anthropology, the human “substance” or nature is without extension and figure yet is a certain amount of real being with definite and distinguishable properties (Shedd, Theological Essays, 135-37). So far as the mental or psychical side of the human nature is concerned, when it is said that the “substance” of all individual souls was created in Adam, of course nothing extended and visible is implied. The substance in this case is a spiritual, rational, and immortal essence similar to the unextended essence of God, in whose image it was made ex nihilo. And so far as the physical and corporeal side of man is concerned, the notion of “substance” must be determined in the same manner. That which stands under, that which is the substans of the corporeal form and phenomena, is an invisible principle that has no one of the geometrical dimensions. Physical life, or the animal soul, though not spiritual and immortal like the rational soul, is nevertheless beyond the reach of the five senses. It occupies no space; it is not divisible by any material instruments; it cannot be examined by the microscope. In speaking therefore of the primary created “substance” of the human body, we must abstract from the notion everything that implies figure and extension of parts: “The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). The visible body is constituted and built up by an invisible vitality. Neither the cell nor protoplasm nor the “ether” of Carus (Physiology 1.13) nor any visible whatever can be regarded as the substans of the body, as the vital principle in its primordial mode. These are all of them extended and objects of sensuous perception. They are the first form, in which the primarily formless physical life embodies itself. They each presuppose life as an invisible. In thinking, therefore, of the “substance” of all individual bodies as having been created in Adam, we must not with Tertullian and others think of microscopic atoms, corpuscles, or protoplasm; but only of the unseen principle of life itself, of which these are the first visible organization. Modern physiology (Haeckel, Creation 1.297) describes the human egg as one one-hundred-twentieth of an inch in diameter, so that in a strong light it can just be perceived as a small speck, by the naked eye. This egg is a small globular bladder which contains all the constituent parts of a simple organic cell. These parts are (a) the mucous cell substance or protoplasm, called the “yolk”; (b) the nucleus or cell kernel, called the “germinal vesicle,” which is surrounded by the yolk (this nucleus is a clear glassy globule of albumen about one six-hundredth of an inch in diameter); and (c) the nucleolus, the kernel speck or “germinal spot” (this is enclosed and surrounded by the nucleus and is the last phase of visible life under the present microscope). This nucleolus is not the invisible life itself in its first phase, as immediately created ex nihilo. This “germinal spot” is only the first hardening, as it were, of the invisible into visibility. It is life in this form; whereas, in the beginning, as created in Adam, physical life was formless and invisible.

General Approaches to the Doctrine of Original Sin

Before entering upon the discussion of the two theories of traducianism and creationism, we observe that there are several ways of handling the doctrine of original sin, or sin as related to Adam.

It may be held simply as a revealed fact without any attempt at explanation. The theologian contents himself with affirming that Scripture teaches that all men were created holy in Adam, had an advantageous probation in Adam, sinned freely in Adam, and are justly exposed to physical and spiritual death upon these three grounds and declines to construct any explanatory theory. In this case, he treats the doctrine of original sin as he does that of the creation of the universe: “Through faith he understands that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). Similarly, through faith he understands that “death passed upon all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12); that “by one offense, judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Romans 5:18); and that “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22); and formulates this in the statement that “all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him, and fell with him, in the first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). But as he does not undertake to explain creation ex nihilo, neither does he undertake to explain the fall in Adam. He accepts the fact of revelation in each case. He has reason to believe that the doctrine of the fall in Adam is truth not error: first, because God would not reveal error; second, because God has made an infinite self-sacrifice in order to deliver man from the guilt and pollution of original sin: a thing he would not have done if he knows that it is not really and truly sin. The doctrine may be held as a revealed fact, and an explanation attempted by the theory of natural or substantial union with Adam. In this case, Adam and his posterity existed together and sinned together as a unity. The posterity were not vicariously represented in the first sin, because representation implies the absence of the party represented; but they sinned the first sin being seminally existent and present; and this first sin is deservedly imputed to them, because in this generic manner it was committed by them. The guilt of the first sin, both as culpability (culpa) and obligation to the penalty of eternal death (reatus poenae), is chargeable to Adam and his posterity upon the common principle that sin is chargeable to the actor and author of it. The imputation of Adam’s sin, upon this theory, differs from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in being deserved, not undeserved or gratuitous. The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by the theory of representative or forensic union with Adam. In this case, Adam as an individual, distinct from Eve, and distinct from his posterity whom in respect to the soul he did not seminally include, sinned representatively and vicariously for his nonexistent and absent posterity. As their vicar and representative, he disobeyed the Eden statute in their room and place, precisely as Christ obeyed the moral law, in respect to both precept and penalty, as the vicar and representative of his people. The sin of Adam, consequently, is imputed to his posterity in the very same way that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer-namely, undeservedly or gratuitously. The posterity are not guilty in the sense of being inherently and personally ill deserving on account of Adam’s sin, just as the believer is not righteous in the sense of being inherently and personally deserving on account of Christ’s obedience. As in the latter instance, only the consequences without the inherent merit of Christ’s obedience-namely, freedom from the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and a title to eternal life-inure to the believer; so in the former instance, only the consequences of Adam’s disobedience without the inherent demerit-namely, the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and forfeiture of a title to eternal life-inure to his posterity. On this theory, Adam’s sin itself, as a disobedient and rebellious act causative of the penalty of eternal death, is not imputed to the posterity because it was not committed by them. Only its penal consequences are imputed. Adam’s act is separated from its effect, namely, the penalty: the former not being chargeable to the posterity; the latter being imputed to and inflicted upon them. The posterity suffer the punitive evil produced by Adam’s sin but are not inherently and personally guilty of this sin itself. The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by a combination of natural with representative union. This is a middle theory between traducianism and creationism, combining elements of both. But like middle theories generally, it contains contradictory elements. If the posterity were present, as natural union implies, they could not be represented; for this supposes absence. If they were absent, as representative union implies, they could not be present, as natural union supposes. A consistent scheme can be constructed upon either view of the Adamic union by itself, but not upon both in combination.⁷[Note: 7. WS: Hodge notices the contrariety of the two views: “If we reconcile the condemnation of men on account of the sin of Adam, on the ground that he was our representative or that he sustained the relation which all parents bear to their children, we renounce the ground of a realistic union. If the latter theory be true, then Adam’s sin was our act as truly as it was his. If we adopt the representative theory, his act was not our act in any other sense than that in which a representative acts for his constituents” (Theology 2.164). “A union of representation is not a union of identity. If Adam and his race were one and the same, he was not their representative, for a thing cannot represent itself. The two ideas are inconsistent. Where the one is asserted, the other is denied” (Princeton Essays 1.138).] This is evinced by the fact that the tendency on the part of the advocates of representation has been to minimize natural union in the combination. The latest and one of the ablest of its defenders, the elder Hodge, founds imputation solely on representation (45). It is important to observe that the earlier advocates of the combination, such as Turretin, for example, asserted that Adam’s sin is imputed both as culpa⁸[Note: 8. guilt, culpability] and reatus poenae.⁹[Note: 9. obligation/liability to punishment] Some of the later advocates assert that it is imputed only as reatus poenae-only as obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death.

These four ways of handling the doctrine of Adam’s sin fall, generally, into the Augustino-Calvinistic anthropology, though some of them have a closer and more self-consistent conformity to it than others. All four assert that penal evil befalls the posterity on account of Adam’s transgression and that this penal evil is physical and spiritual death. This differentiates them from all theories which deny these two points:

Any man who holds that there is such an ascription of the sin of Adam to his posterity, as to be the ground of their bearing the punishment of that sin, holds the doctrine of imputation; whether he undertakes to justify this imputation merely on the ground that we are the children of Adam or on the principle of representation or of scientia media;¹⁰[Note: 0 10. middle knowledge] or whether he chooses to philosophize on the nature of unity until he confounds all notions of personal identity, as President Edwards appears to have done. (Princeton Essays 1.139) A fifth method is that of the ancient Semipelagian and the modern Arminian: The doctrine of original sin is received as a truth of revelation, and an explanation is attempted by the theory of representative union. Adam acted as an individual for the individuals of his posterity. The latter are not guilty of his first sin, either in the sense of culpability or of obligation to punishment, but are exposed on account of it to certain nonpenal evils-principally physical suffering and death. They do not either deserve or incur spiritual and eternal death on account of it. This results only from actual transgression, not from Adam’s sin. The doctrine of the unity of Adam and his posterity in the commission of the first sin and the fall from God is of the utmost importance in anthropology. Without it, it is impossible to maintain the justice of God in the punishment of inherited sin. For it is evident that an individual person cannot be morally different from the species to which he belongs. He cannot be holy if his race is sinful. No individual can rise above his species and exhibit a character and conduct radically different from theirs. Consequently, in order to establish the responsibility and guilt of the individual in respect to the origin of sin, a foothold must be found for him in the being and agency of the race to which he belongs. He must exist in and act with his species. This foothold is furnished in the biblical doctrine of a primary existence and a primary act of the common human nature in Adam, of which the secondary individual existence and the secondary individual character and acts are the manifestation. Accordingly, all schools of evangelical anthropology have held to St. Paul’s representation of the Adamic connection, however differently they may have explained it. No one of them has adopted the Pelagian dogma of pure individualism and absolute isolation from Adam. In contending that the human species was a complete whole and an objective reality in the first parents, traducianism obtains a foundation for that community of action whereby a common sinful character was originated by a single voluntary act of apostasy, the consequences of which appear in the historical series of individuals who are propagated parts of the species. The sinful disposition of an individual is the evil inclination of his will; this evil inclination comes along in and with his will; and his will comes from Adam by ordinary descent. (See supplement 4.1.5.) The perplexity into which a devout and thoughtful mind that resolutely holds the Augustinian position that inherited sin is damning and brings eternal death, while not holding the coordinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of the species in Adam, is thrown is seen in the following extract from Pascal:

How astonishing is the fact that the mystery, the most profound of all in the whole circle of our experience, namely, the transmission of original sin, is that of which from ourselves we can gain no knowledge. It is not to be doubted that there is nothing more revolting to our reason, than to maintain that the first man’s sin has entailed guilt upon those whose remoteness from the original source seems to render them incapable of its participation. Such transmission appears to us not only impossible, but even unjust. For what can be more opposed to the laws of man’s poor justice than eternally to condemn an infant incapable of free will for a sin in which he had so little share that it was committed six thousand years before he came into existence. Nothing, assuredly, is more repugnant to us than this doctrine; yet, without this mystery, of all the most incomprehensible, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Through this abyss it is that the whole tangled thread of our moral condition takes its mazy and devious way; and man is actually more inconceivable apart from this mystery, than the mystery itself is inconceivable by man. (Thoughts: Greatness and Misery of Man)

There are difficulties attending either theory of the origin of man, but fewer connected with traducianism than with creationism. If the mystery of a complete existence in Adam on both the psychical and physical side is accepted, the difficulties connected with the imputation of the first sin and the propagation of corruption are relieved. As Turretin says: “There is no doubt that by this theory all the difficulty seems to be removed.” It is only the first step that costs. Adopting a revealed mystery in the start, the mystery in this instance, as in all the other instances of revealed mysteries, throws a flood of light and makes all things plain.

There are three principal supports of traducianism: (1) Scripture, (2) systematic theology, and (3) physiology.

Scriptural Support for Traducianism The preponderance of the biblical representations favors it. The Bible teaches that man is a species, and the idea of a species implies the propagation of the entire individual out of it. Individuals, generally, are not propagated in parts, but as wholes. In Genesis 1:26-27, the man and the woman together are denominated “man.” In these two verses, as in the remainder of the first chapter, Hebrew ˒ādām¹¹[Note: 1 11. àÈãÈí = man, mankind] is not a proper name. It does not denote the masculine individual Adam alone, but the two individuals, Adam and Eve, together. Adam, here, is the name of the human pair or species. It is not until the second chapter of Genesis that the word is used as a proper name to denote the masculine and to exclude the feminine: “God said, Let us make man (˒ādām)¹²[Note: 2 12. àÈãÈí] in our image, and let them have dominion. So God created man (˒et-hā˒ādām)¹³[Note: 3 13. àÆúÎçÈàÈãÈí] in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (1:26-27; cf. 5:2, where the same usage occurs). In employing the singular pronoun him, the writer still has both individuals in his mind, as is evinced by the change of him to them. Eve is included when it is said that God created “man” in his own image. In such connections Adam = Adam and Eve. The term is specific, not individual. Augustine (City of God 15.17) thus notices the specific use of the word man:

˒ĕnôš¹⁴[Note: 4 14. àÁðÀåÉùÑ] signifies “man” not as Adam does, which also signifies man, but is used in Hebrew indifferently for man and woman; as it is written: “Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2), leaving no room to doubt that though the woman was distinctively called Eve, yet the name Adam, meaning man, was common to both. But Enos means man in so restricted a sense, that Hebrew linguists tell us it cannot be applied to woman.¹⁵[Note: 5 15. WS: Gesenius does not agree with this statement: “˒ĕnôš (àÁðÀåÉùÑ = man, mankind) is rarely put for the singular, is more commonly collective for the whole race (Job 7:17; Job 15:14;Psalms 8:5). It is the same as ˒ādām (àÈãÈí = man, mankind), but only in poetic style.”] (See supplement 4.1.6.) The same usage is found in the New Testament. In Romans 7:1 St. Paul asks, “Know not, brethren, how that the law has dominion over the man (tou anthrōpou)¹⁶[Note: 6 16. τοῦ ἀνθρώπου] as long as he lives?” The law spoken of is that of marriage, to which the wife equally with the husband is subject, both of whom are here denominated “the man.” When, in verse 2 the apostle wishes to individualize and distinguish the husband from the wife, he designates him not by anthrōpos¹⁷[Note: 7 17. ἄνθρωπος = man] but by anēr.¹⁸[Note: 8 18. ἀνήρ = man (i.e., male)] When St. Paul asserts (1 Corinthians 15:21) that “by man came death,” he means both Adam and Eve, whom in the next clause he denominates to adam.¹⁹[Note: 9 19. τὸ ἀδάμ = man (or Adam)] Again, our Lord is denominated the Son of Man (anthrōpou),²⁰[Note: 0 20. ἀνθρώπου = man] although only the woman was concerned in his human origin, showing that woman is “man.” When Christ (Matthew 12:5) asks: “How much then is a man better than a sheep?” he includes both sexes. When St. Paul addresses a letter to the “saints and faithful brethren which are at Colossae” (Colossians 1:1) and St. John (1 John 3:15) asserts that “whosoever hates his brother is a murderer,” they mean both male and female alike and equally. And this original unity of species is referred to in St. Paul’s statement respecting the marriage relation: “They two shall be one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). In accordance with this, Augustine denominates Adam and Eve “the first men in paradise”²¹[Note: 1 21. primos illos homines in paradiso] (City of God 11.12). The elder Protestant divines call them protoplasti.²²[Note: 2 22. the first ones formed, the first men]

That man was created a species in two individuals appears also from the account of the creation of Eve. According to Genesis 2:21-23, the female body was not made, as was the male, out of the dust of the ground, but out of a bone of the male. A fractional part of the male man was formed by creative power into the female man. Eve was derived out of Adam. “The man,” says St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:8), “is not made out of (ek)²³[Note: 3 23. ἐκ] the woman, but the woman out of (ex)²⁴[Note: 4 24. ἐξ] the man.” And the entire woman, soul and body, was produced in this way. For Moses does not say that the body of Eve was first made out of Adam’s rib and then that her soul was separately created and breathed into it-as was the method when Adam’s body was made out of the dust of the ground-but represents the total Eve, soul and body, as formed out of a part of Adam: “The rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:22-23). That the total female was supernaturally produced from the male favors the traducian position that the total man is propagated; that the soul like the body may be derived. The same creative act which produced the body of Eve out of a rib of Adam produced her soul also. By a single divine energy, Eve was derived from Adam, psychically as well as physically. This goes to show that when a child of Adam is propagated, the propagation includes the whole person and is both psychical and physical. For the connection between a child and its parents is nearer and closer than was the connection between Adam and Eve at creation (see Augustine, On the Soul 1.29, where this argument is employed).

These two individuals, created ex nihilo in the manner thus described, are in Scripture sometimes both together called “man” and sometimes separately are called “male-man” (˒îš)²⁵[Note: 5 25. àÄéùÑ] and “female-man” (˒iššâ),²⁶[Note: 6 26. àÄùÑÌÈä] man and woman (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:23). In and with them was also created the entire human species, namely, the invisible substance, both psychical and physical, of all their posterity. This one substance or “human nature” was to be transformed into millions of individuals by sexual propagation. The creation proper of “man” was finished and complete on the sixth day. After this, there is only the generation of “man.” The biblical phraseology now changes. Eve is “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). Adam “fathered a son after his own image” (5:3). There is no longer any creation of man ex nihilo by supernatural power; but only the derivation of individual men out of an existing human substance or nature, by means of natural law, under divine providence and supervision. The question now arises: Why is not this propagation only physical, as the creationist asserts? Why should not propagation be confined to the body? The first reply is because it is contrary to Scripture. Certain texts forbid it. In John 3:6 Christ affirms that “that which is born (begotten) of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” The term flesh here denotes man in his entirety of soul and body. The spiritual birth certainly includes both; and the connection implies that the natural birth is equally comprehensive. Men, says our Lord, are born naturally of their parents and spiritually of God; and it is the same whole man in both instances. Now to the term flesh employed in this signification of the total person, Christ applies the participle gegennēmenon.²⁷[Note: 7 27. γεγεννημένον = begotten] The flesh or man, consisting of soul and body together, is begotten and born. That sarx²⁸[Note: 8 28. σάρξ = flesh] often comprehends the soul as well as the body is clear from many passages (Matthew 24:22; Luke 3:6; John 1:14; John 17:2; Acts 2:17; Romans 3:20; Romans 8:4-5; Romans 8:8; Galatians 5:16; Galatians 5:19). In all these places “flesh” comprises both the psychical and physical nature of man. Christ employs it in the same signification in John 3:6 and teaches that it is a generation and birth.

Traducianism is taught in John 1:13. Here, the regenerate are said to be “begotten (egennēthēsan)²⁹[Note: 9 29. ἐγεννηθήσαν] not of blood (human seed) nor of the will of the flesh (sexual appetite) nor of the will of man (human decision).” This implies that the unregenerate are “begotten of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man.” But an unregenerate man is an entire man, consisting of soul and body. His soul and body, therefore, were “begotten and born of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man.” In this passage, the soul sustains the same relation to generation and birth that the body does; both come under one and the same category. In Romans 1:3 it is said that Christ “according to the flesh (kata sarka)³⁰[Note: 0 30. κατὰ σάρκα] was made of the seed of David.” The term flesh here denotes the entire humanity of our Lord, antithetic to his divinity, denominated pneuma hagiōsynēs.³¹[Note: 1 31. πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = spirit of holiness] Christ’s soul and body together constituted his sarx;³²[Note: 2 32. σάρξ = flesh] and this is represented as being “made of the seed of David.” St. Paul employs the verb ginōai³³[Note: 3 33. γίνομαι = to become] to denote a generation, in distinction from a creation, in the origin of Christ’s humanity. The connection forbids the confinement of this generation to the physical side of his human nature, so that his human body only, not his human soul, sprang from David (Shedd on Romans 1:3). In Hebrews 12:9 it is said that “we have had fathers of our flesh (tēs sarkos hēmōn),³⁴[Note: 4 34. τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν] and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits (tōn pneumatōn)³⁵[Note: 5 35. τῶν πνευμάτων] and live?” This text is quoted by the creationist to prove that man is the father of the body only, God being the father of the soul. There are two objections to this explanation. (1) God is not called the “Father of our spirits,” which would be the required antithesis to “fathers of our flesh.” He is denominated “the Father of spirits” generally, not of human spirits in particular. The omission of hēmōn³⁶[Note: 6 36. ἡμῶν = of our] with pneumatōn³⁷[Note: 7 37. πνευμάτων = of spirits] shows that the fatherhood is universal-relating to men and angels. God is the heavenly Father in distinction from an earthly father. (2) Had the writer intended to set the human spirit in contrast with the human body, as the creationist interpretation supposes, he would have said “the Father of our spirit” (tou pneumatos hēmōn)³⁸[Note: 8 38. τοῦ πνεύματος ἡμῶν] instead of “the Father of spirits” (tōn pneumatōn).³⁹[Note: 9 39. τῶν πνευμάτων] In this text, therefore, as in John 3:6, sarx⁴⁰[Note: 0 40. σάρξ = flesh] comprehends the whole man, soul and body. Chrysostom and Theophylact refer “spirits” in this text to angels exclusively. Calvin and Bengel find creationism in it. Moll (in Lange’s Commentary) and Ebrard find traducianism: “Neither here nor anywhere else does sarx mean body. (Therefore, this reference is incorrectly cited to support creationism, which teaches that only the body is engendered by the parents but the soul is created by God.) On the contrary, sarx here means, as always, the life that comes into existence naturally through creaturely power”⁴¹[Note: 1 41. Σάρξ (sarx) bezeichnet hier so wenig als irgendwo, den Leib (daher der Creationismus sich für die Lehre, dasz der Leib allein von den Ältern gezeugt werde, die Seele aber von Gott geschaffen werde, mit Unrecht auf diese Stelle beruft); sondern σάρξ (sarx) bezeichnet hier, wie immer, das natürliche durch creaturliche Krafte zu Stande kommende Leben.] (Ebrard, “Sarx”).

Traducianism is taught in Acts 17:26 : God “has made of one blood all nations.” The natural interpretation of this text is that men of all nationalities are made of one common human nature as to their whole constitution, mental and physical. There is nothing to require the creationist qualification-“every man, as to his body”-but everything to exclude it. For the apostle was speaking particularly of man as rational, immortal, and having the image of God; and therefore in saying that “man is made of one blood,” he certainly could not have intended to exclude his rational soul in this connection. In Hebrews 7:10 it is said that “Levi,” that is, the whole tribe of Levi (v. 9), “was yet in the loins of father, when Melchizedek met” Abraham. Here Abraham is called the father of Levi, though he was Levi’s great-grandfather. Levi and his descendants are said to have had an existence that was real, not fictitious, in Abraham. But it contradicts the context to confine this statement to the physical and irrational side of Levi and his descendants. The “paying of tithes” which led to the statement is a rational and moral act and implies a rational and moral nature as the basis of it. In Psalms 139:15-16 there is a description of the mysterious generation of man: “My substance was not hid from you when I was made in secret.” Though the reference is to the embryonic and fetal life, yet it includes the mental and moral part of man with the physical. The clauses I was made and my substance certainly denote the speaker as an entire whole. The same is true of Job 10:10 : “Have you not poured me out as milk and curdled me like cheese?” “Me” here is the whole person. The total ego is described as begotten in Jeremiah 1:5 : “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you.” In Psalms 22:9-10 David says, “You are he that took me from the womb. I was cast upon you from the womb; you are my God from my mother’s belly.”

Genesis 2:1-3 teaches that the work of creation was complete on the sixth day: “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made.” If the human soul has been a creation ex nihilo, daily and hourly, ever since Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, it could not be said that “on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.” Compare Exodus 20:11 : “In six days God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day”; and Hebrews 4:4 : God “rested from all his works.”

1 Corinthians 15:22 supports traducianism: “In Adam (tō adam)⁴²[Note: 2 42. τῷ ἀδάμ] all die.” The article shows that Adam here, as in Genesis 1:17, denotes Adam and Eve inclusive of the species. To “die in Adam” implies existence in Adam. The nonexistent cannot die. Merely metaphorical existence in Adam is nonexistence. Merely physical existence in Adam without psychical existence would allow physical death in Adam but not spiritual death. To die in Adam both spiritually and physically supposes existence in Adam both as to soul and body. The same remark is true respecting Ephesians 2:3 : “We were by nature (physei)⁴³[Note: 3 43. φύσει] children of wrath.” Here the term physis⁴⁴[Note: 4 44. φύσις] denotes a real nature derived from foregoing ancestors, as in Galatians 2:15 : hēmeis physei ioudaioi.⁴⁵[Note: 5 45. ἡμεῖς φύσει ἰουδαῖοι = we are Jews by nature] And this nature is the whole nature of man, not a part of it. The apostle does not mean to teach that men are exposed to divine displeasure because of a sensuous and physical corruption which belongs to the body in distinction from the soul, but because of a corruption that is mental as well as physical. The word hēmarton⁴⁶[Note: 6 46. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 5:12 strongly supports the traducian view. The invariable usage in both the Old and New Testaments makes it an active verb. There is not a single instance of the alleged passive signification. Had the apostle meant to teach that all men were “regarded” as having sinned, he would not have said pantes hēmarton,⁴⁷[Note: 7 47. πάντες ἥμαρτον = all sinned] but pantes hēmartēkotes ēsan⁴⁸[Note: 8 48. πάντες ἡμαρτηκότες ἦ σαν = all were regarded as sinners] as in Genesis 44:32; Genesis 43:9. But if all “sinned” in Adam in the active sense of hēmarton,⁴⁹[Note: 9 49. ἥμαρτον = sinned] all must have existed in him. Nonentity cannot sin; and merely physical substance cannot sin (Shedd on Romans 5:12).

These scriptural texts support the traducian position that the individual man is propagated as an entire whole consisting of soul and body and contradict that of the creationist that a part of him is propagated and a part is created. These biblical data countenance the view, however difficult it may be to explain it, that man being a unity of body and soul is begotten and born as such a unity. Says Edwards (Against Watts’s Notion of the Preexistence of Christ’s Human Soul): To be the son of a woman is to receive being in both soul and body, in consequence of a conception in her womb. The soul is the principal part of the man; and sonship implies derivation of the soul as well as the body, by conception. Not that the soul is a [material] part of the mother as the body is. Though the soul is no [material] part of the mother, and be immediately given by God, yet that hinders not its being derived by conception; it being consequent on it according to a law of nature. It is agreeable to a law of nature, that when a perfect human body is conceived in the womb of a woman, and properly nourished and increased, a human soul should come into being: and conception may as properly be the cause whence it is derived, as any other natural effects are derived from natural causes and antecedents. For it is the power of God which produces these effects, though it be according to an established law. The soul being so much the principal part of man, a derivation of the soul by conception is the chief thing implied in a man’s being the son of a woman. In saying that the soul is “no part of the mother as the body is,” that it is “immediately given by God” and yet that this “does not hinder its derivation by conception,” Edwards evidently means that the soul is not physical substance like the body and has a psychical in distinction from physical derivation or generation that is peculiar to itself.

Samuel Hopkins (Works 1.289) follows Edwards in saying that “the mother, according to a law of nature, conceives both the soul and body of her son; she does as much toward the one as toward the other, and is equally the instrumental cause of both.” Says Nitzsch: “That the individual dispositions of the soul are propagated by generation will scarcely be disputed.⁵⁰[Note: 0 50. WS: Cf. As You Like It 1.1: “I know you are my elder brother: the courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the firstborn: but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers between us: I have as much of my father in me as you.”] Why not their generic dispositions also? Hence, we cannot but maintain the doctrine of derivation, together with creation” (Christian Doctrine §107). Weiss (Theology of the New Testament §67) explains St. Paul as teaching that “the soul is begotten.” The few texts that are quoted in favor of creationism are as easily applicable to traducianism: “The souls which I have made” (Isaiah 57:16). The context does not imply a distinction of the soul from the body. On the contrary, “soul” here is put for the whole person. Traducianism equally with creationism holds that God is the maker of the soul. The body, certainly, is propagated, yet God is its maker. Augustine (On the Soul 17) remarks that God may as properly be said to “make” or “create” in the instance of the propagation of the soul, as in that of its individual creation:

Victor wishes the passage, “Who gives breath to the people,” to be taken to mean that God creates souls not by propagation, but by insufflation of new souls in every case. Let him, then, boldly maintain, on this principle, that God is not the Creator of our body, on the ground that it is derived from our parents; and that because corn springs from corn, and grass from grass, therefore God is not the maker of each, and does not “give each a body as it has pleased him.”

God “forms the spirit of man in him” (Zechariah 12:1). The verb yāṣar⁵¹[Note: 1 51. éÈöÇø = to fashion or form] in this place favors the traduction of the soul (see Lewis’s note in “Genesis” in Lange’s Commentary, 164). “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life” (Job 33:4). This is true also from the traducian position: “The God of the spirits of all flesh” (Numbers 16:22). The context shows that “spirit” here is put for the whole man: “Shall one man sin, and you be angry with the whole congregation.” “Father of spirits” (Hebrews 12:9). The antithesis is not between the body and soul of man, but between man and spirits generally. If we are subject to our earthly fathers, ought we not to be subject to the universal Father? (see p. 441). “My father works hitherto” (John 5:17). God works perpetually in preservation and providence. Another explanation, favored by the context, refers the statement to the exertion of miraculous power. Christ asserts that he works miracles like his Father.

Theological Arguments for Traducianism

Second, the theological argument strongly favors traducianism. The imputation of the first sin of Adam to all his posterity as a culpable act is best explained and defended upon the traducian basis. The Augustinian and Calvinistic anthropologies affirm that the act by which sin came into the world of mankind was a self-determined and guilty act and that it is justly chargeable upon every individual man equally and alike. But this requires that the posterity of Adam and Eve should, in some way or other, participate in it. Participation is the ground of merited imputation, though not of unmerited or gratuitous imputation (Shedd on Romans 4:3; Romans 4:8). The posterity could not participate in the first sin in the form of individuals, and hence they must have participated in it in the form of a race. This supposes that the race-form is prior to the individual form, that man first exists as a race or species and in this mode of existence commits a single and common sin. The individual, now a separate and distinct unit, was once a part of a greater whole. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 16 asserts the commission of a common sin in the following terms: “All mankind, descending from Adam by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.” The term mankind denotes here the human nature before it was individualized by propagation. This nature sinned. Human nature existing primarily as a unity in Adam and Eve and this same human nature as subsequently distributed and metamorphosed into the millions of individual men are two modes of the same thing.

Again, that a participation of some kind or other in the first sin is postulated in the Westminster formula is proved by the fact that the first sin is called “a transgression”: “Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, does bring guilt upon the sinner” (Westminster Confession 6.6). This agrees with Romans 5:15, where the first sin of Adam is denominated paraptōma.⁵²[Note: 2 52. παράπτωμα = transgression] But a transgression supposes a transgressor; and the transgressor in this instance must be the “all” who “sinned,” spoken of in 5:12, and who are the “mankind descending by ordinary generation”-that is to say, the human nature existing in Adam and subsequently individualized by propagation. Anselm (Concerning the Virginal Conception 10) reasons as follows:

Each and every child of Adam is man by propagation, and a person by that individuation whereby he is distinguished from others. He is not responsible for original sin because he is man or because he is a person. For if this were so, it would follow that Adam would have been responsible for original sin before he sinned, because he was both man and a person prior to sin. It remains, therefore, that each and every child of Adam is responsible for original sin because he is Adam. Yet not merely and simply because he is Adam, but because he is fallen Adam.

Anselm here uses “Adam” to designate the “human nature” created in Adam and Eve. (See supplement 4.1.7.) The doctrine of the specific unity of Adam and his posterity removes the great difficulties connected with the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity that arise from the injustice of punishing a person for a sin in which he had no kind of participation. This is the Gordian knot in the dogma. Here the standing objections cluster. But if whatever is predicable of Adam as an individual is also predicable of his posterity, and in precisely the same way that it is of Adam, the knot is not cut but untied. No one denies (1) that the individual Adam committed the first sin prior to its imputation to him and that it was righteously imputed to him as a culpable and damning act of disobedience or (2) that his first sin corrupted his nature simultaneously with its commission and that this corruption, like its cause the first sin, was prior to its imputation as culpable and damning corruption. There is certainly nothing unjust in imputing the first sin and the ensuing corruption to the individual Adam, on the ground that he was the author of both.

Now if the traducian postulate be true, namely, that Adam and his posterity were specifically one in the apostasy, all that is said of the individual Adam can be said of his posterity. The posterity committed the first sin prior to its imputation to them, and it was imputed to them as a culpable and damning act of disobedience. And the first sin corrupted the nature of the posterity simultaneously with its commission, and this corruption, like its cause the first sin, was prior to its imputation to them as culpable and damning corruption. There is certainly nothing unjust in imputing the first sin and the ensuing corruption to the posterity, on the ground that they were the author of both. There is indeed something inscrutably mysterious in the postulate of specific unity, but not more than there is in the postulate that God creates individual souls each by itself and brings about corruption of nature in them negatively by the withdrawment of grace, instead of positively by the first sin of Adam.

Edwards argues that a coexistence of the posterity with the first parents, if conceded, would relieve the difficulties connected with the imputation of their sin. For this implies coagency, and this implies common responsibility. He says (Original Sin in Works 1.491):

I appeal to such as are habituated to examine things strictly and closely, whether, on supposition that all mankind had coexisted in the manner mentioned before, any good reason can be given why their Creator might not, if he had pleased, have established such a union between Adam and the rest of mankind as was in the case supposed. Particularly, if it had been the case that Adam’s posterity had, actually, according to a law of nature, somehow grown out of him and yet remained contiguous and literally united to him, as the branches to a tree or the members of the body to the head; and had all, before the fall, existed together at the same time though in different places, as the head and members are in different places: in this case, who can determine that the author of nature might not have established such a union between the root and branches of this complex being, as that all should constitute one moral whole; so that there should be a communion in each moral alteration and that the heart of every branch should at the same moment participate with the heart of the root, be conformed to it, and concurring with it in all its affections and acts, and so jointly partaking in its state, as a part of the same thing. This is defective, in that Edwards supposes a unity composed of individual persons aggregated together, instead of a single specific nature not yet individualized by propagation, as in Augustinianism. But it shows that in his opinion, if a unity of action in the first sin can be obtained for all mankind, then the imputation of the first sin to them is just. The following from Coleridge (Aids to Reflection 1.289 [ed. Harper]) also implies that if oneness of nature and substance between Adam and his posterity could be proved, the justice of imputing the first sin would follow: “Should a professed believer ask you whether that which is the ground of responsible action in your will could in any way be responsibly present in the will of Adam-answer him in these words: ‘You, sir, can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative.’ ” The transmission of a sinful inclination is best explained by the traducian theory. “Original sin,” says Westminster Larger Catechism 26, “is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation, so that all that proceed from them in that way are conceived and born in sin” (Job 14:4; Psalms 51:5; Psalms 58:3; John 3:6; Ephesians 2:3). This moral corruption, resulting from the first transgression, could not be transmitted and inherited unless there were a vehicle for its transmission, unless there were a common human nature, both as to soul and body, to convey it. Tertullian’s maxim is logical: “The transmission of sin [involves] the transmission of the soul.”⁵³[Note: 3 53. tradux peccati, tradux animae] The transmission of sin requires the transmission of the sinning soul. Sin cannot be propagated unless that psychical substance in which sin inheres is also propagated. Sin cannot be transmitted along absolute nonentity. Neither can it be transmitted by a merely physical substance. If each individual soul never had any other than an individual existence and were created ex nihilo in every instance, nothing mental could pass from Adam to his posterity. There could be the transmission of only bodily and physical traits. There would be a chasm of six thousand years between an individual soul of this generation and the individual soul of Adam, across which “original sin” or moral corruption could not go “by natural generation.” The difficulty of accounting for the transmission of sin upon the creationist theory has led some creationists to assert the creation of all individual human souls simultaneously with the creation of Adam and their quiescent state until each is united with its body. Ashbel Green adopts this view in his lectures on the catechism (Presbyterian Board edition). But this does not relieve the difficulty because, as distinct and separate individuals, the souls of the posterity could not commit the one single sin, the “one offense” of Adam. They could only sin “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Romans 5:14), that is, imitate and repeat Adam’s sin; and there would be as many sins to be the cause of death as there were souls. These souls must therefore primarily have been a single specific psychical nature, in order to “sin in Adam and fall with him in his first transgression.”

These difficulties in respect to participation in the sin that is imputed and its transmission are felt by those who hold to the imputation of original sin and yet reject traducianism. Hence, the creationist partially adopts traducianism. The theory of representative union is compelled to fall back upon the natural union of Adam and his posterity for support. Turretin does this (9.9.11-12):

There can be no imputation of another’s sin (peccati alieni) unless some conjunction with him is supposed. This union (communio) may be threefold: (1) natural, like that between parent and child; (2) moral and political, like that between king and subject; and (3) voluntary, like that between friends or between debtor and surety. This latter kind of union we do not include here, since we acknowledge that it implies a previous consent of the parties; but only the first two kinds, in which it is not necessary that there should be an actual consent in order that the sin of one should be imputed to another. Adam was conjoined with us by this double bond: natural, so far as he is our father and we are his children; political and also forensic, as far as he was the head (princeps) and representative head (caput representativum) of the whole human race. The foundation therefore of imputation is not only the natural union, but especially (praecipue) the moral and federal union, by means of which God made a covenant with Adam as our head.

Turretin mentions the “natural” union first in the order, but describes it as second in importance. In explaining what he means by denominating Adam a public and representative person, he quotes the statement of Augustine that “all those were one man, who by derivation from that one man were to be so many distinct and separate individuals.” But he then qualifies Augustine’s phraseology by adding that “they were not one man by a specific or numerical unity, but partly by a unity of origin, since all are of one blood, and partly by a unity of representation, since one represented all by the ordinance of God.” This qualification shows that Turretin was not willing to adopt Augustine’s statement in full and that he departed in some degree from the Augustinian anthropology. He denies what Augustine affirms, namely, that all men were in Adam by both a specific and a numerical unity, and introduces an idea foreign to Augustine, namely, that of unity by representation. Furthermore, he implies that there is a difference between “specific unity” and “unity of origin.” But they are the same thing. Specific unity is of course the unity of a species; and this means that all the individuals are propagated from a common nature or substance. This, certainly, is unity of origin. Second, he implies that numerical unity is identical with specific unity. But the two are distinct from each other. A numerical unity may or may not be a specific unity. In the instance of the persons of the Trinity, there is a numerical unity of nature or substance, but not a specific unity. A specific unity implies the possibility of the division of the one numerical substance among the propagated individuals of the species. But there is no possibility of a division of the divine essence among the trinitarian persons. Consequently, they constitute a numerical but not a specific unity. But in the instance of man, the unity is both numerical and specific. The human nature while in Adam is both numerically and specifically one. But when it is subdivided and individualized by propagation, it is no longer numerically one. The numerically one human nature becomes a multitude of individual persons, who are no longer the single numerical unity which they were at first. But they are still specifically one.

It is evident that while this eminent theologian lays more stress upon representative union than upon natural, he does not think that it can stand alone. He supports the representation by the unity of nature. He does not venture to rest the imputation of an act of Adam that brought eternal death upon all his posterity as a penal consequence, solely upon a representation by Adam of an absent and nonexistent posterity. A mere and simple representative acts vicariously for those whom he represents; and to make the eternal damnation of a human soul depend upon vicarious sin contradicts the profound convictions of the human conscience. To impute Adam’s first sin to his posterity merely and only because Adam sinned as a representative in their room and place makes the imputation an arbitrary act of sovereignty, not a righteous judicial act which carries in it an intrinsic morality and justice. This, Turretin seems to have been unwilling to maintain; and therefore, in connection with representative union, he also asserted to some extent the old Augustinian doctrine of a union of nature and substance. Yet, adopting creationism as he did, this substantial union, in his system, could be only physical (“in a physical sense and in a seminal way”;⁵⁴[Note: 4 54. sensu physico et ratione seminali] 9.9.23), not psychical.

Turretin marks the transition from the elder to the later Calvinism, from the theory of the Adamic union to that of the Adamic representation. Both theories are found in his system and are found in conflict. He vibrates from one to the other in his discussion of the subject of imputation. Sometimes he represents the union of Adam with his posterity as precisely like that of Christ with his people, namely, that of vicarious representation alone, without natural and seminal union. Adam’s posterity, he says, “did not yet exist in the nature of things”⁵⁵[Note: 5 55. nondum erant in rerum natura] when Adam’s sin was committed and consequently “in the same way that we are constituted sinners in Adam, even so we are constituted righteous in Christ. Now in Christ we are constituted righteous through the imputation of righteousness; therefore, we are constituted sinners in Adam through the imputation of his sin”⁵⁶[Note: 6 56. Eadem ratione constituimur peccatores in Adamo, qua justi constituimur in Christo. At in Christo justi constituimur per justitiae imputationem; ergo et peccatores in Adamo per peccati ipsius imputationem.] (9.9.16). Sometimes, on the other hand, he teaches that Adam’s posterity were “in the nature of things,”⁵⁷[Note: 7 57. in rerum natura] having seminal existence in Adam, and for this reason the exaction of penalty from them is a matter of justice. The following is an example of this style of reasoning: In the imputation of Adam’s sin, the justice of God does not exact punishment from the undeserving, but the ill deserving-ill deserving, if not by proper and personal ill desert, yet by a participated and common ill desert founded in the natural and federal union between Adam and us. As Levi was tithed by Melchizedek in the person of Abraham, so far as he was potentially in his loins, so that he was regarded as justly tithed in and with Abraham, who then bore the person of his whole family,⁵⁸[Note: 8 58. qui totius prosapiae suae personam tunc gerebat] so, much more, can the posterity of Adam be regarded as having sinned in him, seeing that they were in him as the branches in the root, the mass in the first individuals and the members in the head.⁵⁹[Note: 9 59. ut rami in radice, massa in primitiis, et membra in capite] (9.9.24-25) This phraseology denotes more than vicarious representation. A representative, pure and simple, does not contain his constituents as the root contains the branches, as the first individuals contain the mass or species, as the head contains the members. Turretin defines Adam as the “stem, root, and head of the human race” (stirps, radix, et caput generis humani; 9.9.23), but qualifies this, by saying that he was so “not only physically and seminally, but morally and representatively.” But a representative proper could not be denominated the stem, root, and head of his constituents.

Comparing this latter passage with the first cited, it is evident that Turretin oscillates between natural and representative union, sometimes relying more upon the one and sometimes more upon the other. While unwilling, with Augustine and the older Reformed anthropology, to rest the imputation of Adam’s sin wholly upon natural union, he feared to rest it wholly upon vicarious representation. He felt the pressure of the difficulties attending a specific or race-existence in Adam and sought to relieve them by combining with the doctrine of natural union that of representative union. In so doing, he attempts to combine iron with clay. For the two ideas of natural union and representation are incongruous and exclude each other. The natural or substantial union of two things implies the presence of both. But vicarious representation implies the absence of one of them. Says Heidegger (Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 228), “to represent is to exhibit by a certain power of law the presence of that which is not present.”⁶⁰[Note: 0 60. Representare est vi quadam juris exhibere praesentiam ejus, quod praesens non est.] The natural union of the posterity with Adam implies their existence in him. Two things cannot be naturally or substantially united, one of which is not present; and still less if one is nonexistent. A soul created ex nihilo in a.d. 1880 could not have been naturally or substantially united with the soul of Adam in 4004 b.c. And, on the other hand, the vicarious representation of the posterity by Adam implies their absence from him and is consistent with even their nonexistence. (See supplement 4.1.8.)

If, therefore, the posterity were existent and present in the progenitors by natural or substantial union, they did not need to be represented and could not be, since representation supposes absence of substance. If, on the other hand, the posterity were absent as to substance when the representative acted, then it is contradictory to endeavor to have them present by means of a natural or substantial union. In other words, natural union logically excludes representation, and representation logically excludes natural union. Either theory by itself is consistent; but the two in combination are incongruous.⁶¹[Note: 1 61. WS: A similar incongruity is found in the combination of creationism with traducianism, attempted by Martensen (Dogmatics §74) and Dorner (Christian Doctrine 2.353).] Nevertheless, the two ideas since the time of Turretin have been combined very extensively in Calvinistic schools, the combination being favored by the rise and progress of representative in the place of monarchical government. De Moor-Marck (15.31) employs both. Witsius (Covenants 1.1.1, 3) unites the two: “Adam sustained a twofold relation: (1) as man; (2) as head and root or representative of mankind.” Here, the root is regarded as a representative of the tree, when in fact it is the tree itself in a certain mode or form of its existence.

It may be said that political representation requires that the parties should be of the same nation and that this implies a natural union as the foundation of the political. But in this case reference is had to expediency or the fitness of the representative to conduct the business of his constituent, not to the justice of the proceeding. So far as justice is concerned, a constituent may be represented by anyone whom he pleases to select and who pleases to act in the capacity of a representative. An American might be represented by an Englishman, provided all the parties concerned are willing. Representative union requires and supposes the consent of the individuals who are to be represented and properly falls under Turretin’s third division of “voluntary union,” which he excludes in the explanation of imputation. But natural union does not require the consent of the individuals. The posterity, prior to their individual existence, are created a specific unity in Adam by the will of God, and while in this status they participate in the first sin. The human species created in this manner acted in and with Adam, and the act had all the characteristics for the species that it had for Adam. It was a moral, a self-determined, and a guilty act for the progenitors and the posterity alike, because it was such for the one human nature itself, which was the first mode in which the posterity were created and existed.

Since the idea of representation by Adam is incompatible with that of specific existence in Adam, the choice must be made between representative union and natural union. A combination of the two views is illogical. But the doctrine of the covenant of works is consistent with either theory of the Adamic connection. The covenant of works was “made with Adam as a public person” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). If “a public person” means the individual Adam solely, acting representatively and vicariously for his posterity, both in obeying and sinning, then the covenant of works was made between God and the individual Adam acting as a representative. If “a public person” means Adam and his posterity as a specific unity, acting directly and not by representation, both in obeying and sinning, then the covenant of works was made between God and the specific Adam. But in either case, it must be observed that it was not the covenant of works that made the union of Adam and his posterity. The union of Adam and his posterity, be it representative or natural, was prior to the covenant and is supposed in order to it. If Adam was a mere individual and represented his nonexistent and absent posterity, this was provided for before the covenant of works was made with him. If Adam was specific and included his existent and present posterity, this also was provided for before the covenant of works was made with him. Hence, the so-called federal union does not mean a union constituted by the foedus or covenant of works. It is rather a status or relation than a union proper. There is a covenant relation resting either upon a representative or a natural union. The union itself of Adam and his posterity, in either case, was not made by the covenant of works but by a prior act of God-by a sovereign declarative act, if the union is representative; by a creative act, if the union is natural and substantial.

According to the traducianist, the facts are as follows: Adam and his posterity were made a unity by the creative act of God. The human species was created in and with Adam and Eve, both psychically and physically. This is natural or substantial union. With this unity, namely, Adam and the human species in him, God then made the covenant of works, according to which this unity was freely to stand or fall together: “The unity of the covenant rested on the unity of nature”⁶²[Note: 2 62. Est unitas naturae, cui unitas foederalis erat innixa.] (Leydecker in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). Having reference to this covenant, Adam and his posterity were “federally one,” that is, one in, not by a foedus, league, or covenant. They were not constituted a unity by the covenant; for they were already and previously a unity by creation. And because they were so, God established the covenant with them. When therefore a “federal union” is spoken of, it must be remembered that it is a secondary union resting upon a primary union: upon natural union according to the traducianist or upon representative union according to the creationist.⁶³[Note: 3 63. WS: Turretin denominates the federal union the principal union (praecipue). But if it be true that Adam and his posterity were not constituted a unity by the covenant (foedus) of works, it cannot be the primary and principal one.]

In the creeds and theological treatises, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, of the Reformation period, the unity of Adam and his posterity is described as natural, substantial, and specific. It is denoted by such terms as massa,⁶⁴[Note: 4 64. massa = mass]natura,⁶⁵[Note: 5 65. natura = nature]essentia.⁶⁶[Note: 6 66. essentia = essence] And Adam means Adam and Eve inclusive of their posterity, as in the first chapter of Genesis: “For although in Adam and Eve the nature initially was created pure, good, and holy, nevertheless, through the fall, their sin entered into the nature”⁶⁷[Note: 7 67. Etsi enim in Adamo et Heva, natura initio pura, bona, et sancta creata est; tamen per lapsum, peccatum ipsorum naturam invasit.] (Formula of Concord, solid declaration; Hase, 643); “the entire human mass, nature, and essence itself was corrupted by the most evil power of Adam’s fall”⁶⁸[Note: 8 68. Lapsus Adae vi pessima, humana tota massa, natura, et ipsa essentia corrupta est.] (Formula of Concord, epitome; Hase, 574). Witsius (Covenants 2.4.11) quotes Cloppenburg as saying that “the apostle in Romans 5:1-21 did not so understand one man Adam as to exclude Eve: which is here the leading error of some.” De Moor-Marck (15.10) remarks respecting Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 2:14 : “Nor does the apostle deny, on the other hand, the sin of the woman, when he teaches that the one man, whom he opposes to Christ as the type of the one to come (typon tou mellontos), is the author of propagated sin, in whom we all sinned and die, whom he also expressly calls Adam (cf. Romans 5:12-19 with 1 Corinthians 15:21-22).”⁶⁹[Note: 9 69. Nec negat ab altera parte apostolus mulieris peccatum, cum unum hominem, quem ceu τύπον τοῦ μέλλοντος Christo opponit, peccati propagati auctorem, in quo peccavimus et morimur omnes, esse docet, quem expresse quoque Adamum vocat. Coll.Romans 5:12-19cum1 Corinthians 15:21-22.] De Moor (5.10) cites Paraeus as making Adam to include Eve (a) by a common nature and (b) by husband and wife being one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Augustine (City of God 11.12) denominates Adam and Eve “the first men in paradise.”⁷⁰[Note: 0 70. primos illos homines in paradiso] Odo (Bibliotheca maxima patrum⁷¹[Note: 1 71. The most extensive library of the fathers] 21.230) remarks: “It is asked how we have sin from our origin, which is Adam and Eve.”⁷²[Note: 2 72. Quaeritur quomodo peccatum habeamus ab origine nostra quae est Adam et Eva.] All this agrees with St. Paul, who asserts that “the woman being deceived was in the [first] transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). And the narrative in Genesis (3:16-19) shows that the punishment for the first sin fell upon Eve as well as upon Adam. The elder Calvinistic theologians say nothing respecting representation. The term is foreign to their thought. The order with them is (1) specific existence in Adam, (2) specific participation in the first sin, (3) imputation of the first sin, and (4) inherence and propagation of original sin. Paraeus (on Romans 5:12) explains pantes hēmarton⁷³[Note: 3 73. πάντες ἥμαρτον] by “all sinned, that is, are held fast in guilt and in obligation to punishment.”⁷⁴[Note: 4 74. Omnes peccaverunt, hoc est, culpa et reatu tenentur.] All men are both culpable and punishable. He proves that they are so by three particulars: (1) By participation in the first act of sin (participatione culpae)⁷⁵[Note: 5 75. by participation of guilt] because the posterity existed seminally in Adam: “All men committed the first sin when Adam committed it, as Levi paid tithes in the loins of Abraham, when Abraham paid them”; (2) by the imputation of the obligation to punishment resulting from participation in the first sin (imputatione reatus)⁷⁶[Note: 6 76. by the imputation of the obligation to punishment] because “the first man so stood in grace, that if he should sin, not he alone but all his posterity should fall from grace and become liable with him to eternal death, according to the threatening, ‘In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die’ ”; and (3) by the propagation of the inherent corruption of nature which results from the participation in and imputation of the first sin. (See supplement 4.1.9.)

According to the elder Calvinism, as represented by Paraeus and those of his class, original sin propagated in every individual rests upon original sin inherent in every individual; original sin inherent in every individual rests upon original sin imputed to every individual; and original sin imputed to every individual rests upon original sin committed by all men as a common nature in Adam. On this scheme, the justice and propriety of each particular and of the whole are apparent. The first sin, which it must be remembered consisted of both an internal lust and an external act, of both an inclination and a volition, is justly imputed to the common nature because it was voluntarily committed by it, is justly inherent in the common nature because justly imputed, and is justly propagated with the common nature because justly inherent. This scheme if taken entire is ethically consistent. But if mutilated by the omission of one of more particulars, its ethical consistency is gone. To impute the first sin without prior participation in it is unjust. To make it inherent without prior imputation is unjust. To propagate it without prior inherence is unjust. The derangement of the scheme by omission has occurred in the later Calvinism. The advocate of mediate imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed either substantially or representatively. The advocate of representative imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed, except in the deluding sense of nominal and putative commission. The elder Calvinism, like Augustinianism, starts with a unity, namely, Adam and his posterity in him as a common unindividualized nature. This unity commits the first sin: “all sinned” (Romans 5:12). This sin is imputed to the unity that committed it, inheres in the unity, and is propagated out of the unity. Consequently, all the particulars regarding sin that apply to the unity or common nature apply equally and strictly to each individualized portion of it. The individual Socrates was a fractional part of the human nature that “sinned in and fell with Adam in his first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). Consequently, the commission, imputation, inherence, and propagation of original sin cleave indissolubly to the individualized part of the common nature, as they did to the unindividualized whole of it. The distribution and propagation of the nature make no alteration in it, except in respect to form. Its natural properties and characteristics by creation and its acquired properties and characteristics by apostasy remain unchanged.

Calvin relies upon the natural union between Adam and his posterity for the explanation of the imputation of original sin (2.1.8):

Two things should be distinctly noticed; first, that our nature being so totally vitiated and depraved, we are on account of this very corruption considered as deservedly condemned in the sight of God. And this liability (obligatio) arises not from the fault of another (alieni delicti). For when it is said that the sin of Adam renders us obnoxious to divine judgment, it is not to be understood as if we being innocent were undeservedly loaded with the guilt (culpam) of his sin. We derive from him not only the punishment, but also the pollution to which the punishment is justly due. Wherefore Augustine, though he frequently calls it the sin of another, in order to indicate its transmission to us by propagation, yet at the same time also asserts it to belong properly to every individual. Therefore infants themselves, as they bring their condemnation into the world with them, are rendered obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness, not by the sinfulness of another. For though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, yet they have the seed of it within them, nay, their whole nature is as it were a seed of sin and therefore odious and abominable to God. Whence it follows that it is properly accounted sin in the sight of God because there could not be liability to punishment without guilt (quia non esset reatus absque culpa).⁷⁷[Note: 7 77. WS: The proof that participation in the first sin is an essential point in early Calvinism has been carefully collected by Landis in a volume entitled Original Sin and Gratuitous Imputation. The author, however, while asserting participation and combating the later doctrine of mere representation by Adam, with particular reference to the views of Hodge, yet rejects the realistic doctrine of race-existence as the true explanation (13, 20, 31). In so doing, he departs from both Augustine and the elder Calvinists, as much as do the advocates of the representative theory. For it is clear that there can be no participation in the first sin unless the posterity are in existence to participate in it. And the only way in which they could exist and act in Adam is as a single specific nature. They could not exist in Adam as an aggregate of millions of individuals.]

The later Calvinism, in some of its representatives, takes the extreme ground of rejecting natural union altogether, as a support of the doctrine of imputation, and resting it wholly upon representation. The elder Hodge is one of the most positive and ablest of this class.⁷⁸[Note: 8 78. WS: Breckenridge (Theology, 499), on the contrary, contends that “we must not attempt to separate Adam’s federal from his natural headship, by which he is the root of the human race; since we have not a particle of reason to believe that the former would ever have existed without the latter.”] “Adam,” he says (Princeton Essays 1.187), “was our representative; as a public person, we sinned in him in virtue of a union resulting from a covenant or contract. Let it be noted, that this is the only union here [Westminster Larger Catechism 22] mentioned. The bond arising from our natural relation to him as our parent is not even referred to.” The objections to this statement are the following: (1) The Westminster Larger Catechism denominates Adam a “public person,” but does not denominate him a “representative.” The term representative is not once employed in the Westminster standards. It has been introduced from the outside to define a “public person.” (2) The Westminster Larger Catechism gives its own definition and defines a “public person” as one “from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation.” Here, only our natural relation to Adam is mentioned; as it is also in Westminster Confession 6.3, where “our first parents,” as public persons, are denominated “the root of all mankind.” Natural not representative union is the “only” union referred to in this definition of a public person by the terms root, descent, and ordinary generation. A representative is not the root of his constituents nor do they descend from him by ordinary generation. (3) The Westminster Larger Catechism states that the covenant was made “with Adam as a public person.” Consequently, Adam could not have been made a public person by the covenant nor could the union between him and his posterity “result from the covenant or contract,” as Hodge asserts. Adam and his posterity, prior to the covenant of works, had been made a natural unity by the creative act of God, as the traducianist contends or else a representative unity by the sovereign act of God as Hodge contends; and with this unity, God established the covenant of works. The covenant presupposes the unity, in both cases. (See supplement 4.1.10.)

Natural union is excluded and representative union made the sole ground of the imputation of Adam’s sin in the following statement of Hodge: In the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, and of our sins to Christ, and of Christ’s righteousness to believers, the nature of the imputation is the same, so that the one case illustrates the others. By virtue of the union between Adam and his descendants, his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people. (Theology 2.194-95)

There is confessedly no natural union between Christ and his people; therefore, argues Hodge, there is none between Adam and his posterity. Christ did not include his people by race-union with them, therefore Adam did not include his posterity by race-union with them. Christ’s people did not participate in his obedience, therefore Adam’s posterity did not participate in his disobedience. Natural union being thus excluded, nothing but representative union remains. Hence it follows that, as Christ vicariously represented his absent people when he obeyed, Adam also vicariously represented his absent posterity when he disobeyed, and “his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people.” The correctness of this reasoning depends upon that of the assumption, and there is an exact similarity between union in Adam and union in Christ. For proof that this is an erroneous assumption, see p. 461.

Examination of the Westminster standards evinces that in the judgment of their authors natural or substantial union is the true ground of the imputation of Adam’s sin and that vicarious representation is inadequate. They never once use the verb represent or the noun representative in the Confession of Faith and catechisms-a fact utterly inconsistent with the assertion that “representative union was the only one they maintained.” The avoidance and total omission of these terms when they were making careful definitions of Adam’s sin shows that they regarded them as unsuitable in this connection. The terms represent and representative, it is true, occur in the theological treatises of this period, even in those of the Westminster divines themselves; but they are excluded from their dogmatic formulas, because while in a loose popular sense Adam may be called a representative of the posterity whom he seminally included, in the strict scientific sense he cannot be. A thing existing in one mode is sometimes said to represent itself as existing in another mode, as when the root is said to represent the tree. But the two are one and the same thing in two forms. The Westminster Assembly explained original sin and its imputation by “natural generation,” “ordinary generation,” the figure of a “root,” and the phrase public person. All the passages in the Westminster documents relating to Adam’s sin are the following: “They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation” (Westminster Confession 6.3); “the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity” (7.2.3); “God gave to Adam a law, by which he bound him and all his posterity to obedience” (19.1); “original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity, by natural generation” (Westminster Larger Catechism 26); “the covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him, in that first transgression” (22); “the rule of obedience revealed to Adam and to all mankind in him, beside a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, was the moral law” (92). In the first of these statements it is said that “the guilt of the first sin was imputed and death and corruption of nature is conveyed” because “our first parents were the root of all mankind.” This teaches natural not representative union, for the root does not vicariously represent the tree as something other than and different from itself and absent and apart from it, but it is the tree itself in the first mode of its existence. A root buried in the ground does not stand for an absent tree and still less for a nonexistent one. When a potato is planted, all the subsequent individuals are seminally present. The vital principle and substance that will produce them is all in the root. And the same is true when the figure of “seed” is taken instead of that of a “root,” as is so often the case in Scripture.

Again, when it is said that “original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation,” unity of substance and nature is taught. Whatever descends by natural generation must be seminally and substantially present in the progenitors. And the same is taught in the explanation of the phrase public person. A public person is described as one “from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation, in whom all mankind sinned and with whom all mankind fell in the first transgression.” In all these Westminster statements, there is not a syllable that teaches that Adam was a nonspecific individual who vicariously represented a nonexistent and absent posterity. And even if it be conceded that the posterity were existent and present physically, their merely physical existence and presence would not justify the assertion that they “sinned with and fell in him.” The verbs sinned and fell and the prepositions with and in are too strong to be applied to the theory of vicarious representation. Men say that a constituent acts “by” his representative, not “in” and “with” him. The temptation by Satan is best explained by traducianism. Upon the theory of creationism, it is impossible to account for the fall of the individual soul by means of a temptation of the devil. The individual soul viewed as newly created ex nihilo is holy. The Calvinistic creationist denies equally with the Calvinistic traducianist that God creates a soul without character. This is the Pelagian view. God’s creative work is always “good” and is so pronounced by him. The soul as a new creation must therefore first be positively holy and then freely fall from this created holiness into sin. And it must be tempted to fall. But on the creationist theory, there is no possibility of a temptation by Satan or from any other quarter. And no attempt is made by the representationist to explain the fall of the posterity by temptation. The only reason that he assigns is that God withdraws grace from the posterity. It is not so in the traducian theory. In the instance of the fall of the entire species in the first human pair, the species was tempted to fall in and with Adam. Adam and Eve were mature and perfect in all their powers-physical, intellectual, and moral. The human nature acted in and with the two sinless individuals, in and with whom it was created. In them it was tempted by Satan and yielded to the temptation. The universality of sin is best accounted for by traducianism. The fall being that of the species in the first pair is of course coextensive with the species. But upon the creationist theory, the fall is that of the individual only. Each soul apostatizes from God by itself. Why should every soul without exception fall? Why not a fall of only a part, as in the case of the angels, who fell as individuals not as a species? A soul as created and holy “has the law written upon the heart, and power to fulfill it” (Westminster Larger Catechism 17). Why should it invariably apostatize?

If it be replied that God withdraws common supporting grace in the instant when he creates each individual soul and therefore every soul apostatizes, this is of the nature of punishment and punishment according to Scripture and reason supposes previous fault (culpa). God did not withdraw the common supporting grace of his Spirit from Adam until after transgression. But here, by the supposition of the creationist, is a pure and holy soul fresh from the hand of God, from whom previous to its apostasy God totally withdraws one of his own gifts by creation in order to bring about apostasy. The withdrawing of grace occurs not because of apostasy, but in order to produce it.

If it be said that this is done because of the transgression of Adam, this is a good reason from the position of traducianism, because the withdrawal, in this case, is after the fall of the posterity in and with Adam. An act has now been performed by Adam and his posterity together, which makes the withdrawal of created gifts from the whole unity righteous and just. But from the creationist position, a newly created and innocent soul that never was substantially one with Adam and did not participate with him in the first transgression is deprived of certain created gifts by an act of sovereignty. There is no reason, upon this theory, why by the same sovereignty men might not be deprived of divine gifts on account of the transgression of Lucifer. Upon the theory of creationism, the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the newly created soul is an arbitrary, not a judicial act. The so-called guilt of obligation to penalty (reatus poenae), on the ground of which the withdrawment of grace rests, is putative and fictitious, not real. It is constructive guilt-the product of an act of sovereign will which decides that an innocent person shall be liable to penal suffering because of anothersin. As in the gospel scheme there is a “righteousness of God,” that is, a constructive and unmerited righteousness when the obedience of Christ is gratuitously imputed, so in this scheme there is an “unrighteousness of God,” that is, a constructive and unmerited unrighteousness when the disobedience of Adam is gratuitously imputed. But this confounds all moral distinctions and destroys all ethics by annulling the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness and putting each in precisely the same relation to divine sovereignty and agency.

If it be replied, as it is by those who combine representative with natural union, that between Adam and his posterity there is a natural union such as does not obtain between man and Lucifer and that this relieves the imputation of the first sin and withdrawal of grace from the charge of arbitrariness, this is creationism betaking itself to traducianism for support. Because, natural union when examined will be found to be race-union; and race-union must be total not partial, psychical as well as physical, in order to be of any use in justifying the imputation of Adam’s sin. Sin is mental, and a merely bodily connection with Adam is not a sufficient ground for imputing his transgression. The representative theory of imputation endeavors to parry the objection to an arbitrary punishment for another’s culpability by separating punishment (poena) from culpability (culpa) and by asserting that Adam’s posterity are punishable for his sin but not culpable for it. They are compelled to endure penal suffering on Adam’s account, though they are not chargeable with his fault or crime. To this separation between the punishment and the culpability of Adam’s first sin, so frequently employed in the later Calvinism, but never in the earlier, there are the following objections.

First, it conflicts with the intuitive conviction of the human mind that culpability and punishment stand in the relation of cause and effect and hence, like these, are inseparable. A free agent is punished because he is culpable. No culpability, then no punishment. No cause, then no effect. That there can be an involuntary obligation to endure the punishment of culpability when there is no culpability contravenes the common sense and judgment of mankind. “There could be no punishment without culpability (non esset reatus absque culpa),” says Calvin (2.1.8). The position that there can be involuntary punishment without culpability nullifies ethics as completely as the position that there can be an effect without a cause nullifies physics. No more demoralizing postulate could be introduced into the province of law and penalty. When the instance of Christ’s suffering punishment without culpability is cited to justify this in the instance of Adam’s posterity, it is forgotten that Christ consented and agreed to this uncommon arrangement, while Adam’s posterity have no option in the matter. If an innocent person, having the proper qualifications and the right to do so, agrees to suffer judicial infliction for another’s culpability, of course no injustice is done to him by the infliction; but if he is compelled to do so, it is the height of injustice.

Second, the separation of punishment from culpability is a characteristic of the Semipelagian and Arminian anthropology and when adopted introduces a Semipelagian and Arminian tendency into Augustinianism and Calvinism. Chrysostom and the Greek fathers generally make this separation. They explain hēmarton⁷⁹[Note: 9 79. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 5:12 to mean not “sinned” but “regarded as a sinner,” not culpability (culpa) but liability to suffer what is due to culpability (poena). They denied that the posterity of Adam participated by natural union in the first sin and are culpable and damnable for it. Adam, they contended, only represented his posterity in their nonexistence and absence, and consequently the statement of the apostle that “death passed upon all men for that all have sinned” means that all men are liable by the sovereign appointment of God to suffer certain evils on account of Adam’s sin but are not really guilty of it in his sight. This same interpretation reappears in the modern Arminianism. Grotius, Limborch, Locke, Whitby, John Taylor, Wahl, and Bretschneider explain hēmarton⁸⁰[Note: 0 80. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 5:12 to mean “to be exposed to suffering and death,” “to be regarded as sinners,” “to endure the punishment of sin”⁸¹[Note: 1 81. peccati poenam subire] (Grotius), “to bear the culpability for sin”⁸²[Note: 2 82. pro peccati [sic] culpam sustines] (Wahl, Clavis in voce). And the reason for giving such an uncommon signification to an active verb which nowhere else in Scripture has such a sense was the opinion that “all men sinned” representatively, not really. (See supplement 4.1.11.) This is wholly foreign to Augustine. In his theory of imputation, “death passed upon all men because all men sinned”-not because “all men were reckoned to have sinned.” He explained hēmarton⁸³[Note: 3 83. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 5:12 in its active sense as denoting the act of the species in Adam. According to him, Adam’s sin is both culpable and punishable in the posterity. The culpability (reatus culpae) as well as the obligation to suffer penalty (reatus poenae) passes by participation, not by representation-an idea unknown to Augustine. Julian, for example, crowds him with the common objection that the posterity could not voluntarily sin in Adam “before they themselves were born and before even their parents or grandparents were begotten.” Augustine replies, first citing the high authority of Ambrose to the same effect, by saying: “Through the evil will of this man all sinned in him, when all were that one man”⁸⁴[Note: 4 84. Per unius illius voluntatem malam omnes in eo peccaverunt, quando omnes ille unus fuerunt.] (Opus imperfectum 4.104). The same reply is made in a multitude of instances (cf. Concerning Merits 1.9; 3.7; Concerning Marriages 2.5; Opus imperfectum 2.179; City of God 21.12). (See supplement 4.1.12.) This Augustinian method of defending the imputation of Adam’s sin passed, as we have observed (pp. 451-52), to the Lutheran and Calvinistic creeds of the Reformation and to Calvinistic theologians generally, down to the seventeenth century. Turretin, we have seen (pp. 447-48), while laying the first stress upon representation, yet retains the doctrine of natural union in connection with it, though adopting creationism. With Augustine and the elder Reformed theologians, he regards culpability and punishability as inseparable; and the imputation of Adam’s sin, with him as with them, meant the imputation of both reatus culpae and reatus poenae. While holding, of course, to the separation of punishment from culpability in the instance of Christ’s vicarious atonement for sin, he denies that such separation is possible when the personal punishment of Adam’s posterity for original sin is the instance. The Tridentine theologians had misemployed this valid separation of the two obligations in the case of Christ’s suffering by transferring it to the ordinary ethical relations of man to the moral law in order to establish their doctrine of ecclesiastical penance. They contended that although the sacrifice of Christ had freed the believer from the culpability of original sin, it had not freed him altogether from its punishment, and therefore he was still bound, more or less, by the reatus poenae⁸⁵[Note: 5 85. obligation to punishment] and must therefore do penance. From the Tridentine divines, this separation passed subsequently, for a different dogmatic reason, to the Arminians and to some of the later Calvinists. Turretin combats this papistic distinction. He argues as follows to prove that when original sin is in question there is no possible separation between culpability and punishability and that if the sacrifice of Christ frees a believer from the culpability of original sin it frees him from all obligation to suffer the punishment of it: The papists erroneously distinguish judicial obligation (reatus) into obligation of culpability (reatus culpae) and obligation to punishment (reatus poenae). Obligation of culpability, they say, is that whereby the sinner is undeserving of the favor of God but deserving of his wrath and condemnation; but obligation to punishment is that whereby he is liable to condemnation and is bound to it. The former obligation, they say, was taken away by Christ; but the latter can remain, at least in respect to the obligation to temporal punishment. But the falsity (vanitas) of this distinction is evident from the nature of each. For since culpability (culpa) and punishment (poena) are correlated, and judicial obligation (reatus) is nothing else than obligation to a punishment that springs from culpability (reatus nihil aliud est quam obligatio ad poenam quam nascitur ex culpa), they mutually establish or abolish each other (se mutuo ponunt et tollunt); so that if culpability and its obligation is taken away, punishment, which cannot be inflicted except on account of culpability, ought necessarily to be taken away. Otherwise it cannot be said that culpability is remitted and its obligation taken away, if anything still remains to be expiated by the suffering of the sinner.

De Moor on Marck (15.8) repudiates this separation of punishment from culpability in similar terms: “The papal distinction between the obligation of guilt and of punishment must altogether be repudiated.”⁸⁶[Note: 6 86. Repudianda prorsus est papistica distinctio inter reatum culpae et poenae.] Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15), by quotations, shows that this was the common view among the elder Calvinists. Amesius (12.2) founds the obligation to suffer punishment on culpability. “Liability to punishment (reatus) is the obligation of the sinner to endure the just penalty on account of his guilt.”⁸⁷[Note: 7 87. Reatus est obligatio peccatoris ad poenam justam sustinendam propter culpam.] Riissen (9.57) distinguishes between reatus potentialis⁸⁸[Note: 8 88. potential obligation (to punishment)] and actualis,⁸⁹[Note: 9 89. actual obligation (to punishment)] but rejects the distinction between reatus culpae⁹⁰[Note: 0 90. the obligation to guilt] and reatus poenae:⁹¹[Note: 1 91. the obligation to punishment]

The obligation is either potential-which denotes the intrinsic dessert of punishment, which is inseparable from sin-or actual, which can be separated from it through God’s mercy, namely, through remission, which properly is the removal (ablutio) of the actual obligation. The former pertains to the demerit of sin and to the to katakritikon or condemnability of it, which always is connected to sin. But the latter pertains to the judgment of demerit or katakrima, condemnation, which is taken away from those for whom the pardon of sin has been accomplished.⁹²[Note: 2 92. Reatus est potentialis, qui notat meritum intrinsicum poenae, quod a peccato inseparabile est; vel actualis, qui per dei misericordiam ab eo separari potest, per remissionem scilicet, quae proprie est reatus actualis ablatio. Ille pertinet ad peccati demeritum, et τὸ κατακριτικόν seu condemnabilitatem, quae semper, peccato adhaeret. Iste vero ad demeriti judicium, seu κατάκριμα, condemnationem, quae tollitur in iis quibus venia peccati facta est.] (9.59) But the papists falsely distinguish the obligation of guilt and of punishment in the fall. The obligation of guilt is stated by them to be that by which the sinner, of himself, is unworthy of the grace of God but is worthy of his wrath and damnation. But the obligation of punishment is that by which he is made liable to damnation and is obligated to it.⁹³[Note: 3 93. Perperam vero a Pontificiis distinguitur reatus in lapsum culpae et poenae: reatus culpae illis dicitur, quo peccator ex se indignus est dei gratia, dignus autem est ipsius ira et damnatione; poenae vero, quo obnoxius est damnationi, et ad eam obligatur.]

Braun (1.3.3, 14) also distinguishes between potential and actual obligation, but denies that punishment can be separated from culpability: The papists foolishly distinguish between the obligation of punishment and the obligation of guilt, as if it were possible that the obligation of guilt could be taken away from us with, nevertheless, the obligation of punishment remaining. It is as if Christ had freed us from guilt, but in such a way that we ourselves must undergo punishment, either in purgatory or elsewhere. This is totally false. For where there is no guilt, there is absolutely no obligation, and no penalty can be imagined.⁹⁴[Note: 4 94. Inepte distinguunt Pontificii inter reatum poenae et reatum culpae, quasi a nobis possit tolli reatus culpae manente tamen reatu poenae: quasi Christus nos liberasset a culpa, sed ita ut nos ipsi luamus poenam, vel in purgatorio, vel alibi: quod est falsissimum. Ubi enim nulla est culpa, ibi nullus prorsus reatus, nullaque poena concipi potest.]

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century, we find the elder Edwards objecting to the separation of punishment from culpability, which is implied in the passive signification given to hēmarton⁹⁵[Note: 5 95. ἥμαρτον = sinned] by Taylor and the Arminian writers of that day: No instance is produced wherein the verb sin which is used by the apostle, when he says “all have sinned,” is anywhere used in our author’s sense for “being brought into a state of suffering” and that not as a punishment for sin. St. Paul very often speaks of “condemnation,” but where does he express it “by being made sinners?” Especially how far is he from using such a phrase to signify being condemned without guilt or any imputation or supposition of guilt. Vastly more still is it remote from his language so to use the word sin and to say man “sins” or “has sinned,” though hereby meaning nothing more nor less than that he by a judicial act is condemned. He has much occasion to speak of “death,” temporal and eternal; he has much occasion to speak of “suffering” of all kinds, in this world and the world to come; but where does he call these things “sin” and denominate innocent men “sinners” or say that they “have sinned,” meaning thereby that they are brought into a state of suffering? (Original Sin 2.4.1) The position that there may be punishment without culpability, in the instance of Adam’s posterity, is sought to be supported, as we have before noticed, by the parallel between Adam and Christ. It is said that Christ confessedly suffered punishment “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2) without being culpable for them, and therefore Adam’s posterity may suffer punishment for Adam’s first sin without being culpable for it. If Christ may endure penal suffering for a sin in which he did not participate, then Adam’s posterity may also. This is the standing argument of the representationist and is often accompanied with the assertion that the two unities are so exactly alike that it is impossible for the traducianist to hold that Adam’s posterity are inherently and personally culpable through their union with Adam and not also hold that believers are inherently and personally meritorious through their union with Christ, that participation in Adam’s disobedience carries with it participation in Christ’s obedience. But examination will show that the two unities, though alike in some particulars, are wholly unlike in others, so that certain characteristics, particularly those of vicariousness and gratuitousness that are connected with one cannot be with the other. St. Paul himself directs attention to some points of difference in the parallel (Romans 5:15-16). In the first place, Christ suffered freely and voluntarily for the sin of man, but Adam’s posterity suffer necessarily and involuntarily for the sin of Adam. Christ was under no obligation to suffer penalty for man’s sin and had he so pleased need not have suffered for it: “No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17-18; Php 2:6-7). But Adam’s posterity owe penal suffering on account of Adam’s sin and have no option in regard to its endurance. They do not, like Christ, volunteer and agree to suffer, but are compelled to suffer; and their suffering, unlike that of Christ, is accompanied with the sense of ill desert. Original sin as imputed, inherent, and propagated; is felt to be guilt; is confessed as such; and is forgiven as such. This implies that, unlike Christ, they must in some way have committed the sin for which they feel personally guilty and for which they are liable to suffer eternal death.

Second, Christ was undeservedly punished when he suffered for the sin of man; but Adam’s posterity are not undeservedly punished when they suffer for the sin of Adam. Christ “suffered the just for the unjust”; but Adam’s posterity do not suffer the just for the unjust. Christ was innocent of the sin for which he suffered; but Adam’s posterity are not innocent of the sin for which they suffer. Consequently, inherent and personal guilt is separable from punishment in the instance of Christ’s suffering, but not in that of Adam’s posterity.

Third, Christ was a substitute when he suffered, but Adam’s posterity are the principals. They do not suffer in the place of sinners when they suffer for Adam’s sin, but they suffer as sinners. They are not vicarious sufferers, as Christ was. They suffer for themselves, not for others. Consequently, the imputation of sin to Christ was constructive and putative; but the imputation of sin to Adam’s posterity is real, like that in the case of an actual criminal.

Fourth, the purpose of Christ’s suffering is expiatory; that of the suffering of Adam’s posterity is retributive. Christ endured penalty in order to the remission and removal of sin; but Adam’s posterity endure penalty solely for the satisfaction of justice. Their suffering obtains neither the remission nor the removal of sin.

Fifth, the guilt of Adam’s sin did not rest upon Christ as it does upon Adam’s posterity, and hence he could voluntarily consent and agree to endure its penalty, without being under obligation to do so. Christ was free from the guilt of Adam’s sin, both in the sense of culpa⁹⁶[Note: 6 96. culpability] and poena.⁹⁷[Note: 7 97. punishment] But the posterity are obligated by both. Christ therefore suffers as an innocent person to expiate a sin in which he did not participate; but Adam’s posterity suffer as guilty persons to satisfy the law for a sin in which they did participate.⁹⁸[Note: 8 98. WS: It may be objected that on the traducian theory the human nature of Christ did participate in Adam’s sin because it was a fractional part of the original human nature which committed this sin. This is true; and if Christ had been born by ordinary generation and his human nature had not been supernaturally prepared for a union with the divine, he would have shared the common guilt of Adam’s sin. But the effect of the miraculous conception and incarnation upon Christ’s humanity was to abolish both the guilt and the pollution derived through the virgin mother from Adam. Christ’s human nature was both justified and sanctified before it was assumed into union with the Logos-justified proleptically, as were the Old Testament saints, on the ground of an atonement yet to be made and sanctified completely by the power of the Holy Spirit. This justification and sanctification of Christ’s human nature was tantamount to nonparticipation in Adam’s sin. For it placed Christ’s human nature in the same innocent and perfect state that the common human nature was in by creation and before apostasy. See pp. 475-76. For Owen’s statement on this point, see Communion with the Trinity, 1.] (See supplement 4.1.13.) This comparison of the union of Christ and his people with that of Adam and his posterity shows clearly that Christ’s relation to the penal suffering which he voluntarily endured was radically different in several particulars from that which Adam’s posterity sustain to the penal suffering which they involuntarily endure and that it is a great error to argue from one union to the other, so far as these particulars are concerned and especially in regard to the particulars of vicariousness and gratuitousness.⁹⁹[Note: 9 99. WS: While dissenting from the views of Hodge on the nature of the union between Adam and his posterity and of the imputation of the first sin, the writer has the most profound respect for the opinions of this learned and logical theologian. With the exception of the elder Edwards, to no divine is American theology more indebted.]

The obvious fallacy in this argument from the parallel between Christ and Adam lies in the assumption that because there may be vicarious penal suffering there may be vicarious sinning and that because there may be gratuitous justification without any merit on the part of the justified there may be gratuitous condemnation without any ill desert on the part of the condemned. The former is conceivable, but the latter is not. One person may obey in the place of others in order to save them; but one person may not disobey in the place of others in order to ruin them. Christ could suffer by mere representation for his absent people for the purpose of their justification; but Adam could not sin by mere representation for his absent posterity for the purpose of their condemnation.

Those who force the parallel between Adam and Christ so far as to make the imputation of Adam’s sin precisely like that of Christ’s righteousness commit the great error of supposing that sin, like righteousness, may be imputed to man in two ways: meritoriously and unmeritoriously or gratuitously. This is contrary both to Scripture and reason. St. Paul teaches that righteousness may be imputed either kata opheilēma¹⁰⁰[Note: 00 100. κατὰ ὀφείλημα = according to debt/what is owed] or kata charin¹⁰¹[Note: 01 101. κατὰ χάριν = according to grace] = dōrean¹⁰²[Note: 02 102. δωρεάν = freely] = chōris ergōn¹⁰³[Note: 03 103. χωρὶς ἔργων = without works] (Romans 3:21; Romans 3:24; Romans 3:28; Romans 4:3-6). He asserts that righteousness may be placed to a man’s account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has obeyed or when he has not obeyed: “To him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that works not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (4:4-5). But St. Paul nowhere teaches the same thing respecting sin. He never says that sin may be put to a man’s account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has sinned or when he has not sinned. His doctrine is that of Scripture uniformly that sin is always imputed to man and angel kata opheilēma,¹⁰⁴[Note: 04 104. κατὰ ὀφείλημα = according to debt/what is owed] never dōrean,¹⁰⁵[Note: 05 105. δωρεάν = freely] never chōris ergōn,¹⁰⁶[Note: 06 106. χωρὶς ἔργων = without works] never undeservedly and gratuitously. The punishment of man’s disobedience he denominates “wages,” but the reward of his obedience he denominates a “gift” (6:23). Christ’s obedience, which is the same thing as “the righteousness of God” (1:17; 9:3), can be a gift to his people; but Adam’s disobedience cannot be a gift to his posterity. Heaven can be bestowed upon the sinner for nothing that he has done; but hell cannot be. The characteristic of gratuitousness or absence of inherent desert can be associated with righteousness, but not with unrighteousness (Shedd on Romans 4:3).

Turretin directs attention to this radical difference between the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and that of Adam’s sin. He shows that the nature of the imputation is not identical in both cases, but differs in respect to the ground and reason of the imputation. The ground and reason is judicial and forensic when Christ’s obedience is imputed, but inherent and personal when Adam’s disobedience is imputed. His language is as follows:

Christ by his obedience is rightly said to constitute us righteous not by inherent righteousness, but by imputed: as Romans 4:6 teaches and 4:19 implies where the contrast with the antecedent condemnation is mentioned. For those are constituted righteous before God who are absolved from merited punishment on account of the obedience of Christ imputed to them not less than Adam’s posterity are constituted unrighteous, that is liable to death and condemnation, on account of the disobedience of Adam. Nor does it follow that because Adam constituted us unrighteous efficiently, through the propagation of inherent depravity (effectivé, per propagationem vitiositatis inhaerentis), on account of which we are liable to death before God, Christ in like manner constituted us forensically and judicially righteous before God by an inherent righteousness given to us by himself. Because the scope of the apostle, which alone is to be considered, does not tend to this, but only exhibits the ground of the condemnation on the one side and of the justification on the other, in our union with the first and second Adam respectively, as to the fact (rem), though the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject.¹⁰⁷[Note: 07 107. WS: “Nec si Adamus nos injustos constituit effective per propagationem vitiositatis inhaerentis, propter quam etiam rei sumus mortis coram deo; sequitur pariter Christum nos justos constituere per justificationem forensem judicii dei per justitiam inhaerentem nobis ab ipso datam. Quia scopus Apostoli, qui unice respiciendus, non eo tendet, sed tantum vult aperire fundamentum communionis reatus ad mortem, et juris ad vitam, ex unione nostra cum Adamo primo et secundo, quoad rem, licet modus sit diversus propter diversitatem subjecti.” [AG: Nor if Adam constituted us unrighteous efficiently through the propagation of an inhering corruption, on account of which even we are obligated to death before God, does it follow equally that Christ constituted us righteous through the forensic justification of God’s judgment through an inhering righteousness granted to us by him. The scope of the apostle’s argument, which alone is to be considered, does not extend to this. He only wishes to show the ground of the common obligation to death and of the right to life from our union with the first and second Adam, as to the fact of it, even though the mode is diverse on account of the diversity of the subject.] This phraseology of Turretin, taken by itself, would teach the mediate imputation of Adam’s sin, which Turretin combated. If Adam’s posterity are constituted unrighteous merely and only “by the propagation of inherent depravity” (and this is all he says here), this was the view of Placaeus. But in other places, Turretin abundantly teaches that there is a reason for this propagation of depravity-namely, the immediate imputation of the first sin. The propagation of inherent depravity requires an explanatory and justifying reason; but the advocate of mediate imputation in denying the imputation of the first sin itself gives none. So far as Turretin held to natural union, the logical reason for the propagation of depravity would be the imputation of the first sin to the posterity because of their participation in it; so far as he held to representative union, the logical reason would be the imputation of the first sin to the posterity constructively and without participation.] (16.2.19)

It is plain that Turretin here founds the imputation of Adam’s sin upon some kind of participation in it. Adam, he says, constituted his posterity unrighteous “efficiently, through the propagation of an inherent depravity.”¹⁰⁸[Note: 08 108. Effectivé, per propagationem vitiositatis inhaerentis.] The propagation of inherent holiness is not the way in which Christ makes his people righteous. The ground of the imputation of Adam’s disobedience, according to this statement of Turretin, is different from that of the imputation of Christ’s obedience because “the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject” or agent. The former imputation rests upon something propagated, inherent, and subjective in the posterity; the latter rests upon something wholly objective-namely, the sovereign decision and judicial declaration of God. The common distinction between legal and evangelical righteousness also shows that righteousness may be imputed in two ways, but sin in only one. “The foundation,” says Turretin (16.3.7), “of imputation is either in the merit and worth of the person to whom something is imputed or else it is outside of the person, in the mere grace and compassion of him who imputes. The first mode is legal imputation, and the last evangelical imputation.” It is clear that while both of these imputations apply to righteousness, only one of them is applicable to sin. Obedience may be imputed to man both legally and evangelically, but disobedience may be imputed to him only legally. (See supplement 4.1.14.) The inference that because God gratuitously imputes Christ’s righteousness to Christ’s righteousness to Christ’s people he also gratuitously imputes Adam’s sin to Adam’s posterity is the same kind of fallacy that lies in the inference that because God works in the human will “to will and to do” when it wills rightly, he also works in it “to will and to do” when it wills wrongly. And to argue that if gratuitous imputation is not true in the case of Adam’s sin it is not true in the case of Christ’s righteousness is like arguing that if God is not the author of sin by direct efficiency he is not the author of holiness by direct efficiency. Both errors proceed upon the false assumption that God sustains precisely the same relation to holiness and sin. But holiness and sin are absolute and irreconcilable contraries; so that some things that are true of the former are untrue of the latter. God may be the author of holiness, but not of sin. He can “give,” that is gratuitously and undeservedly impute, righteousness, but not unrighteousness. He can pronounce a man innocent when he is guilty because Christ has obeyed for him; but he cannot pronounce a man guilty when he is innocent because Adam disobeyed for him. These are self-evident propositions and intuitive convictions; and they agree with the scriptural representations respecting the difference between the imputation of righteousness and the imputation of sin.

Physiological Arguments for Traducianism The physiological argument favors traducianism. Sex in man implies a species, and a species implies that the entire invisible rudimental substance of the posterity is created in the first pair of the species. In nature universally, the Creator does not create a species piecemeal. The term species has a twofold definition according to the point of view taken. A species may be defined at its beginning (prior to its generation and propagation) or at its close (subsequent to its generation and propagation). In the first case, the species is a unity; in the second case, it is an aggregate or multitude.

Defining in the first manner: A species is a single invisible nature created in a primitive pair of individuals, which nature, by division of substance through generation and propagation, becomes a multitude of individuals. This defines the human species at the beginning of its history or at the moment of its creation on the sixth day. He who saw Adam and Eve prior to the conception of Cain saw the human species in its first mode. The species then was one and undistributed in the first pair of individuals.

Defining in the second manner: A species is a multitude of individuals who are procreated portions of a single invisible nature that was created in a primitive pair and have descended from them in a natural succession of families. This defines the human species at the close of its history or at the end of the world. He who shall see all the individuals of the human species in the day of judgment will see the human species in its second mode. The species then will be a multitude, not a unity.

Naturalists generally define in the second manner, that is, as an aggregate of individuals. De Candolle defines a botanical species as “a collection of all the individuals which resemble each other more than they resemble anything else; which can by mutual fecundation produce fertile individuals; and which reproduce themselves by generation, in such a manner that we may from analogy suppose them to have sprung from a single individual” (“Species” in Penny Cyclopaedia) Quatrefages defines an animal species as “a collection of individuals more or less resembling each other, which may be regarded as having descended from a single primitive pair, by an uninterrupted and natural succession of families” (Human Species 1.3). A species or a specific nature is that primitive invisible substance or plastic principle which God created from nonentity, as the rudimental matter of which all the individuals of the species are to be composed. The first oak tree, for example, contained the seminal substance of all oak trees. The Creator has exerted no strictly creative power in the line of the oak since he originated that vegetable species. He has exerted only a sustaining and providential agency in the propagation of individual oak after individual oak, as this agency is seen in the law of vegetable growth. This doctrine of the creation of a species is taught in Genesis 2:5 : God “made every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew.”¹⁰⁹[Note: 09 109. WS: This is the rendering of the Septuagint and Vulgate. The Targums and Syriac render: “Now no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprouted forth” (Speaker’s Commentary in loco).] This describes the origination ex nihilo of a species in the vegetable kingdom. A plant made by God “before it was in the earth and before it grew” could not have been an evolution out of the earth. It is true that into the composition of the first oak there entered various material elements that were already in existence, the earths and gases, but these did not constitute the oak proper. The oak itself, considered as a new and previously nonexistent species, was that invisible principle of vegetable life which the Creator originated ex nihilo in this particular instance, by which these earths and gases were built up into the visible oak. It belongs among those “things invisible” of which the eternal Son of God is said to be the Creator in Colossians 1:16. It is one of those “things not seen” (mē phainomena)¹¹⁰[Note: 10 110. μὴ φαινομένα] of which the “things seen” (ta blepomena)¹¹¹[Note: 11 111. τὰ βλεπόμενα] are made (Hebrews 11:1; Hebrews 11:3). Hodge (Theology 2.80-82) explains the original invisibility of a species by the following quotations. Says Agassiz: The immaterial [invisible]¹¹²[Note: 12 112. WS: “Invisible” is preferable to “immaterial” in this connection because the immaterial strictly speaking is the mental and spiritual. Physical life is neither. It belongs to the material world. It is matter, not mind, but in an invisible state or mode.] principle determines the constancy of the species from generation to generation and is the source of all the varied exhibitions of instinct and intelligence which we see displayed. The constancy of species is a phenomenon dependent upon the immaterial [invisible] nature. All animals may be traced back in the embryo to a mere point upon the yolk of an egg, bearing no resemblance whatever to the future animal. But even here, an immaterial [invisible] principle which no external influence can prevent or modify is present and determines its future form; so that the egg of a hen can produce only a chicken, and the egg of a codfish only a cod.

Similarly Dana says that “the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea or potential element which is at the basis of every individual of the group.” “Here,” says Hodge, “we reach solid ground. Unity of species does not consist in unity or sameness of organic structure, in sameness as to size, color, or anything merely external; but in the sameness of the immaterial [invisible] principle or ‘potential idea’ which constitutes and determines the sameness of nature.” This view of life as an invisible formative principle lies under all the historical physics and has been adopted by the leading scientific minds. None but the materialists have rejected it, and their speculations have been destructive of scientific progress whenever they have prevailed. Agassiz’s “invisible principle” and Dana’s “idea” or “potential element” is the same thing as the vis vitae¹¹³[Note: 13 113. power of life] of Haller, the nisus formativus¹¹⁴[Note: 14 114. organizing force] of Blumenbach, the vis medicatrix naturae¹¹⁵[Note: 15 115. the healing power of nature] of Stahl, the “living principle” of Hunter, the “individuating principle” of Coleridge, the “animating form” of Saumerez. Says Saumerez (Physiology 1.16-17; cf. Heinroth, Anthropology, 54): The animating form of a physical body is neither its external organization nor its figure nor any of those inferior forms which make up the system of its visible qualities; but it is the power, which not being that organization nor those visible qualities, is yet able to produce, to preserve, and to employ them. It is the presiding principle which constitutes the power of the system; the bond of its elementary part; the cement that connects them in one whole; the efficient cause whence the individuality of every system arises and in which the form it assumes resides. It is the power by which the human species differs from the brute, the brute from the vegetable, the vegetable from inanimate matter; it is the cause that inanimate matter is converted into organs living and active; that the acorn is evolved into an oak; that the brute embryo is evolved into an animal, and the human embryo into a man. The generation and propagation of individuals succeeds the creation of a species in the biblical account. God having originated an invisible specific nature or substance, then provides for its division and propagation into a multitude of distinct and separate individuals. This is taught in Genesis 1:12 : “The earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind.” This is vegetable propagation. The generation of the animal is taught in 1:22: “Be fruitful and multiply.” In the Mosaic cosmogony, the creation of a species is the base, and its evolution into individuals is the superstructure. Every true and real species begins by a creative fiat, back of which there is no species of this kind in existence. A true and real species cannot be accounted for by evolution because this implies existing substance to be evolved. But when the invisible specific substance has been originated from nonentity, it then develops. When God has made a vegetable species “before it was in the earth,” it then “yields seed after its kind.” That the species contains all the individuals is proved by nonsexual propagation. In the lowest range of vegetable and animal life, propagation is without sex. The moner (cell) simply divides itself into two (fission); and these divide again, and so on indefinitely. Here the child is as old as the parent (Roget, Physiology 2.583). Again in the instance of propagation by buds (gemmation), the cell protrudes a part of itself. It buds. And this protruded part may exist either partially or entirely separate from the stock. In both fission and gemmation, there is no impregnation of egg by sperm, of female by male.

Now in both of these instances, the creative act that originated ex nihilo the species or primitive type inlaid in it all that evolves from it either by fission or by gemmation. The species is capable of producing all this series by innumerable splittings or dividings without the intervention of a second creative act of God. This is all prepared and provided for in the one act that originated the species from nonentity.

Sexual propagation, which is the usual method in the higher plants and animals, also proves that the species contains all the individuals. The two sexes may exist in one individual who is hermaphrodite or double-sexed. In most of the higher plants, every blossom contains both the male organs (the stamen and anther) and the female organs (the pistil and germ). The garden snail produces eggs in one part of the sexual gland and in another part sperm, but the conjunction of the two individuals is requisite to impregnation. The majority of plants are hermaphrodites. Only a few, like the willow and poplar and some aquatic plants, propagate themselves by sex in two individuals. But in the animal world, the rule is the reverse. Propagation of a species, here, is by male and female individuals; and each successive pair is the offspring of a preceding pair and so backward until the very first primitive pair is reached. This primitive pair was a creation ex nihilo; and the Creator of the first pair created in and with them the invisible but real substance of all their posterity. A species or specific nature then, though an invisible principle, is a real entity, not a mere idea. When God creates a primordial substance which is to be individualized by propagation, that which is created is not a mental abstraction or general term having no objective correspondent. A specific nature has a real existence, not a nominal. The dispute between the realist and nominalist is easily settled if the parties distinguish carefully between specific and nonspecific substance or, in other words, between organic and inorganic substance. When specific or vital substance is in view, then realism is the truth; the species is a reality equally with the individuals that are produced out of it. Both species and individuals are entities. But when there is no species, when there is no vital specific substance out of which the individual is produced, then the only reality is the individual. “Species” in this case is employed in a nominal and improper sense. It is only an abstract term denoting a collection of individuals who are the only reality in the case.

Accordingly, the answer to the question between realism and nominalism-namely, whether a general conception has objective reality-depends upon the nature of the thing referred to. The dispute between the parties has overlooked this. In respect to certain things, the assertion of the nominalist is correct; in respect to certain others, the realist is correct. For example, the general conception of an inkstand has no objective correspondent because inkstands are not propagated from a specific substance or nature. They are inorganic, nonvital substance. They are not a species. They are only individuals. The only reality is the particular single inkstand. “Inkstand” as a general term is merely a name, not a thing. The assertion of the nominalist is correct here. The same is true of the crystal. There is no propagation of crystals from a common specific substance. The only reality here is the individual crystal. Again, there is no objective correspondent to such general terms as biped, quadruped, animal, vegetable, etc., because these denote classes or orders, not species; neither is there an objective correspondent to the general term state or nation: “Although we speak of communities as sentient beings; although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests, and passions; nothing really exists or feels but individuals” (Paley, Moral Philosophy 6.11). The individuals of a nation are not propagated out of the nation, but out of the race. There is no English or French propagation. Propagation is human, not national. Englishmen and Frenchmen are primarily the sons of Adam and only secondarily the sons of Alfred and Clovis. But the general conception of an oak, eagle, lion, or man has objective reality because each of these is a species. All of them belong to the organic world. The individual oak is a portion of a primitive invisible substance, which substance really exists, because God created it from nothing “in the day that he made every plant of the field before it was in the earth” (Genesis 2:5). The oak has two modes of existence, while the crystal has only one. The oak first exists as a single specific nature and then afterward as a multitude of individuals. The crystal has no existence but that of the single particular crystal. And the same is true of the eagle, lion, and man. In reference to these propagated things, realism is correct in asserting that the general conception has objective reality, and nominalism is incorrect in denying it.

Realism, then, is true within the sphere of specific, organic, and propagated being; and nominalism is true within that of nonspecific, inorganic, and unpropagated being. “Crystal” as a general conception denotes only the collective aggregate of all the individual crystals that ever exist. The individual, here, is the only actual and objective reality. But “man” as a general conception denotes not only the collective aggregate of all the individual men that ever exist, but also that primitive human nature of which they are fractional parts and out of which they have been derived. The individual, in this instance, is not the only actual and objective reality. The species is real also. The one human nature in Adam was an entity as truly as the multitude of individuals produced out of it. The primitive unity “man” was as objective and real as the final aggregate “men.”

There is a spurious realism arising from a wrong definition of the term human nature. Human nature is sometimes explained to be merely a common property of a substance like “rationality” or “immortality.” As all individual men have rationality and immortality as a characteristic quality, so all men have “humanity” or “human nature” as a characteristic quality. Human nature, as thus defined, is only an attribute or adjunct of each individual; and the whole of “human nature,” in this case, belongs equally and alike to each individual, as does the whole of the property or quality of rationality or immortality. Dr. Hodge, in his explanation of realism and objections to it, so understands and defines “human nature.” He regards it as an adjunct of the individual; as something united with it. He explains it as “the manifestation of the general principle of humanity in union with a given corporeal organization” (Theology 2.51). “An individual man is a given corporeal organization, in which humanity as a general life or force is present” (2.52). “That which constitutes the species, or genus, is a real objective existence, one and the same numerically as well as specifically. This one general substance exists in every individual belonging to the species and constitutes its essence” (2.53). “Individual men are the manifestations of this substance, numerically and specifically one and the same, in connection with their several corporeal organizations” (2.54). He illustrates his view by magnetism, electricity, etc.: “As magnetism is a force in nature existing antecedently, independently, and outside of any and all individual magnets; and as electricity exists independently of the Leyden jars in which it may be collected or through which it is manifested as present; so humanity exists antecedently to individual men and independently of them” (2.52). (See supplement 4.1.15.) This is an erroneous definition. Human nature is a substance, not the property or quality of a substance. It is not the property or quality of an individual substance, but is itself a specific or general substance. Nor is it a specific or general substance added to or united with an individual, because the latter is only an individualized part of the former. Nor is it a “general principle manifesting itself in a given corporeal organization.” All of these definitions are incorrect.¹¹⁶[Note: 16 116. WS: Anselm complained of this same misapprehension of the notion of a species on the part of Roscellin and the Nominalists. He contended that general conceptions were not mere flatus vocis [AG: breath of the voice; i.e., mere words or labels], but denoted substances. “Nondum intellegit,” he says of Roscellin; “quomodo plures hommes [sic] in specie sint unus homo; non potest intelligere aliquid esse hominem, nisi individuum” [AG: he does not yet understand in what way many men are one man in species; he cannot understand anything to be man except the individual]; Baur, Doctrine of the Trinity 2.411-12.] Human nature is a specific or general substance created in and with the first individuals of a human species, which is not yet individualized, but which by ordinary generation is subdivided into parts and these parts are formed into distinct and separate individuals of the species. The one specific substance, by propagation, is metamorphosed into millions of individual substances or persons. An individual man is a fractional part of human nature separated from the common mass and constituted a particular person having all the essential properties of human nature. The individual Socrates, for example, is not a previously existing “corporeal organization” to which “human nature” either in the sense of a property like rationality or in the sense of a “general substance” or “general principle” is added, but he is a distinct part of the human nature created in Adam, which part has been separated from the common mass and individualized by ordinary generation and which individualized part has the very same properties that the common mass has, but a different form. Suppose that a bit of clay is broken off from a larger mass and then molded into a cup. This cup now has an individual form that is peculiar to itself, such as it did not have before it was broken off and molded. This cup still has all the specific properties of clay; such as extension, color, mineral, and earthly elements, etc. But the clay that is in this individual cup is not the clay that is left in the lump from which it was broken off. Nor is it the clay that is in other individual cups that have been formed from other pieces broken off from the lump. Neither is this cup a piece of clay without properties to which a certain set of properties belonging to the lump are added, but it is simply a piece of the lump itself, having all the essential properties of the clay, but with an individual shape peculiar to itself. Take another illustration of individuality. There is a definite and fixed amount of carbon in the universe. A certain part of it is individualized under the providential law of crystallization and becomes a black diamond; and a certain other part of it is individualized by the same method and becomes the Kohinoor. The substance of each of these individual diamonds is a fraction of carbon, taken from the original sum total of carbon in the universe. But the form or individuality of the one is quite different from that of the other. And no atom of the carbon that enters into the black diamond enters into the Kohinoor. Similarly, no integrant of that portion of “human nature” which constitutes the individual Peter is an integrant of the individual John. But John is as truly human as Peter. The common properties of human nature belong to each alike.¹¹⁷[Note: 17 117. WS: The inquiry may arise whether carbon, here, is not a species and the crystal an individual under it-contrary to what was said on p. 468 respecting the inorganic sphere. The reply is that the crystal though having an individuality has not a specific individuality. This requires that the individual be produced by propagation and have no other properties than those which are in the specific substance. But a crystal is not produced by propagation, and even in the instance of the diamond, which is the purest form of carbon, it is not absolutely free from other properties than those of carbon; while anthracite, charcoal, and graphite, and other individual forms of carbon are highly impure. Carbon, however, is one of those general terms which denote an objective reality within the sphere of inorganic being and so far goes to prove the truth of realism. The original sum total of carbon is as objectively real as any one of its individualized parts.] (See supplement 4.1.16.)

Another illustration of individuality is furnished by the magnetic stone. If it be broken into small fragments, each piece will be a complete magnet by itself, having all the qualities of the original unity. Each fragment will have its magnetic poles and its point of indifference, like the undivided mass. The only difference will be in the quantity and the form, that is, in the individuality of the piece. The question respecting the priority of the universal (the species) and the individual (res) arises here. Whether the universal is prior to the individuals depends upon what individuals are meant. If the first two individuals of a species are in mind, then the universal, that is, the species, is not prior, but simultaneous (universale in re).¹¹⁸[Note: 18 118. universal in the thing (i.e., the universal exists in the thing) (see universals in glossary 1)] The instant God created the first pair of human individuals, he created the human nature or species in and with them. But if the individuals subsequent to the first pair are in mind, then the universal, that is, the species, is prior to the individuals (universale ante rem).¹¹⁹[Note: 19 119. universal before the thing (i.e., the universal exists prior to the particular object) (see universals in glossary 1)] God created the human nature in Adam and Eve before their posterity were produced out of it.

Accordingly, the doctrine of universale ante rem is the true realism in case res denotes the individuals of the posterity. The species as a single nature is created and exists prior to its distribution by propagation. The universal as a species exists before the individuals (res) formed out of it. And the doctrine of universale in re is the true realism in case res denotes only the first pair of individuals. The specific nature as created and existing in these two primitive individuals (res) is not prior to them, but simultaneous with them.¹²⁰[Note: 20 120. WS: On realism and nominalism, see Hase, Anselm 2.77; Neander, History 4.356; Dorner, Person of Christ 2.377; Überweg, History of Philosophy 1.365-66; Baur, Doctrine of the Trinity 2.406-7; Baumgarten-Crusius, Concerning the True Difference between the Realist and Nominalist Scholastics.]

Traducianism or propagation on the side of the body presents less difficulty and is adopted by creationism. It should not be confined to the body but extended to the soul, for the following physiological reasons.

Man at every point in his history, embryonic as well as fetal, is a union of soul and body, of mind and matter. He is both psychical and physical. There is no instant when he is a mere brute. An embryo without a rational principle in it would be brutal, not human. The human embryo is only potentially a human body; and it is also potentially a human soul. The development of the psychical part keeps pace with that of the physical. The body of a newborn infant is as distant from the body of manhood as the mind of a newborn infant is from the mind of manhood. That the human egg cell under the microscope cannot be distinguished from the canine egg cell does not prove that the two are identical in species. If they were, the evolution of one into a man and the other into a dog is unaccountable. There must be a psychical principle in one that is not in the other which makes the difference in the growth and development of each. The fact that there is no manifestation of mind does not prove that there is no mental principle in the human embryo. The newborn child reveals moral and mental traits as little as does the unborn child. Feticide is murder in the eye of God and of a pure human conscience; but it could not be unless there is rational as well as animal life in that which is killed. Were there merely and only a physical entity without a psychical, the extinguishment of this life would no more be criminal than the crushing of a caterpillar. Creationists themselves suppose a very early creation of the individual soul and its infusion into the body. Some make the date the fortieth day after conception. In the fetal state, the soul sleeps as it does in the infant or the adult; only it is a continual sleep. But the soul is as really existent in its sleeping state as in its waking state. Says Saumerez (Physiology 1.231):

Sleep is that condition of the system when the sentient and rational principles have a total suspension of action, when external impressions are of none effect and the mind itself is in a dormant state. Such is the natural condition of the fetal state that the various substances are absent upon which the organs of sense and of sensation are destined to act; and the organs themselves are not properly evolved. Sleep, therefore, must be its natural condition. The creation of the soul subsequently to the conception of the body and its infusion into it is contrary to all the analogies in nature. Under the common providence of God, as seen in nature, one portion of a living organism is not first propagated and then a second part created and added to it. Composition and juxtaposition of parts is not the method in propagation; but generation and growth of the whole individual creature at once and altogether. Says Bolingbroke, borrowing from Bacon:

Nature does not proceed as a statuary proceeds in forming a statue, who works, sometimes on the face, sometimes on one part, and sometimes on another; but “she brings forth and produces the rudiments of all the parts at the same time”:¹²¹[Note: 21 121. Rudimenta partium omnium simul parit et producit.] she throws out altogether, and at once, the whole system of every being, and the rudiments of all the parts. The vegetable or the animal grows in bulk and increases in strength; but it is the same from the first. (Patriot King) So, too, the soul and the body have a parallel and equal growth:

Nature, crescent, does not grow alone In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes, The inward service of the mind and soul Grows wide withal.

-Hamlet 1.3

If the body is propagated and the soul created, the body is six thousand years older than the soul in the instance of an individual of this generation. Personal identity is jeopardized by such a hypothesis.

Traducianism as Both Mysterious and Reasonable The doctrine of the creation of a specific nature that is psychical as well as physical and its individualization by propagation is a mystery like that of all creation ex nihilo and is a matter of faith. The creation of all mankind in Adam cannot be explained. All that can be done is to keep the doctrine clear of self-contradiction: “By faith we rationally understand (nooumen)¹²²[Note: 22 122. νοοῦμεν] that the worlds were framed by the word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). By the exercise of the same kind of reasonable faith, we understand that all men existed and apostatized in the first human pair. The fall in Adam is a doctrine of revealed religion, not of natural religion. Human consciousness and observation teach the doctrine of sin, but not of the sin in Adam. If the Scriptures teach this and the symmetry of doctrine requires it and all the analogies of nature favor it and it explains other doctrines that are inexplicable without it, then it is rational to hold it as a constituent part of the Christian system. And in some form or other, the sin in Adam is affirmed in all evangelical anthropologies. But like all the mysteries of the Christian religion, there is an element of reason and intelligence in this mystery, and it is possible to say something in its defense. The following particulars are to be noted, in this reference. The distinction between “nature” and “person” required in traducianism is acknowledged to be valid in both trinitarianism and Christology. God is one nature in three persons. Christ is one person in two natures. In these spheres, the general term nature denotes an objective entity or substance, as much as the general term person. Realism, not nominalism, is the philosophy adopted by the church when constructing the doctrines of the Trinity and the God-man. Traducianism carries this same distinction into anthropology. Man was originally one single human nature which by propagation became millions of persons. This human nature was as much an objective reality as divine nature. And a human person is of course a reality. The individualization or personalizing of a common nature in and by its issuing persons is wholly different in anthropology from what it is in theology. Human generation is infinitely diverse from eternal generation and procession. Each trinitarian person is the whole divine nature in a particular mode or “form of God” (Php 2:6); but each human person is only a portion of the human nature in a particular mode or form of man. In trinitarianism there is no division and distribution of essence; but in anthropology there is. The persons of the Trinity are, each one of them, the same numerical essence, identical, and entire. When it is said that the Son is “of” the essence of the Father, the preposition ek¹²³[Note: 23 123. ἐκ = out of] is not used partitively, as it is when it is said that an individual man is “of” the substance of mankind. The trinitarian persons are also said to be “in” the essence-a preposition never used respecting a human person. God the Father is not a portion of the divine essence, but is the whole essence in that hypostasis. The same is true of the Son and the Spirit. But a human person is only a part of the specific human nature. If we should suppose God to create a human species that was intended to be propagated into a million human persons or individuals and that the distribution of substance was to be mathematically equal in every instance, then each individual of such a species would be one-millionth part of it. (See supplement 4.1.17.)

Adam and Eve were two human persons created by God on the sixth day. In and with them, God also created the entire invisible nature of the human species; the masculine side of it in Adam, the feminine in Eve. This nature was complex: being both psychical and physical, spiritual and material.¹²⁴[Note: 24 124. WS: Creationism asserts that it was incomplex and simple. It was only physical and material.] Adam and Eve procreated Cain “in their own image and likeness” (Genesis 5:3). As they were each of them a synthesis and union of body and soul, so was their son. This son was an individualized part of the psychico-physical nature that was created and included in the parents. Abel was another individualized part. Four individuals now constituted and also included the human species, instead of two as at first. “Human nature” was now comprised in four persons instead of two. By ordinary generation, the specific nature was still further subdivided and individualized into millions of persons. There is no creation ex nihilo in this process, but procreation out of an existing substance. He who looked upon Adam and Eve in Eden, the moment after their creation, saw the whole human race in its first form. And he who shall look on the millions of individuals in the day of judgment will see the same human race in its last form. The difference between the two visions is formal, not material. The conception of a “nature” or “specific substance” must be kept metaphysical in anthropology, as it is in theology and Christology. All visible and ponderable elements must be banished, and we must think of a substance that is unextended, invisible, and formless. It was at this point that Tertullian and other traducianists erred. They attempted to explain the mystery by “atoms,” “corpuscles,” and “animalcules.” In conceiving of the one human nature of which all individual men are portions, we are to think of an invisible in accordance with Hebrews 11:3 : “The things which are seen were not made of things that do appear.” Visibilities were made out of invisibilities. This way of conceiving is possible, so far as the psychical or mental side of the human nature is concerned. The mind of man is substance-yet spiritual substance, occupying no space and having no form. It is also possible so far as the physical or bodily side of the human nature is concerned. For scientific physiology cannot stop with the microscopic cell. It goes back of this, to the invisible life, which no microscope can exhibit, as the ultimate or metaphysical mode of the human body. The vital principle is as invisible as the human spirit itself, though it is animal, not rational entity or substance. We can think of the invisible substance or formative principle of a human body as still in existence, although the body as a visible organization and an extended form has been dissolved to dust for centuries. The body of Alexander the Great, as an invisible, is still a part of the physical universe. It has not been annihilated. And yet it is as difficult to explain its present existence, as to explain its existence in Adam. “The life,” says our Lord, “is more than the meat.” The invisible principle that animates the body is “more,” that is, more real and permanent than the food that nourishes it or even the material elements which it builds up into a visible form. The elder Edwards was unquestionably tending toward the Augustinian doctrine of a specific human nature in his scheme of a unity of Adam and his posterity constituted by divine omnipotence working after the manner of a continual creation in unifying the acts and affections of the posterity. The defect in this is the absence of an underlying substance to be the ground and support of the phenomenal acts and exercises. Adam’s posterity lack substantial being in him, on this theory. Had Edwards definitely employed the old category of “substance” instead of “a communion and coexistence in acts and affections” (Original Sin in Works 2.483), he would have simply reaffirmed the doctrine of Augustine, of the more orthodox of the Schoolmen, and of the theologians of the Reformation-namely, that the posterity were one in Adam as natura, massa, substantia. A mere “unity of acts and affections” brought about by a divine constitution would not be a unity of nature and substantial being. Neither is this conceivable. For acts and affections require a subject; and this subject must be either an individual substance or a specific substance; either an individual soul, as the creationist postulates, or a specific one, as the traducianist contends. In some places Edwards, however, suggests that there may be unity of substance between Adam and his posterity: From these things it will clearly follow that identity of consciousness depends wholly on a law of nature and so on the sovereign will and agency of God; and therefore, that personal identity, and so the derivation of the pollution and guilt of past sins in the same person, depends on an arbitrary divine constitution; and this, even though we should allow the same consciousness not to be the only thing which constitutes oneness of person, but should, beside that, suppose sameness of substance requisite. For even this oneness of created substance, existing at different times, is merely dependent identity-dependent on the pleasure and sovereign constitution of him who works all in all. (Original Sin in Works 2.487) Answers to the Principal Objections against Traducianism The following are the principal objections urged against the theory of traducianism.

It is said that it conflicts with the doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness. It does not if the doctrine of the miraculous conception is held. The Scriptures teach that the human nature of our Lord was perfectly sanctified in and by his conception by the Holy Spirit. Sanctification implies that the nature needed sanctification. Had Christ been born of Mary’s substance in the ordinary manner, he would have been a sinful man. His humanity prior to conception was an undividualized part of the common human nature. He was the “seed of the woman,” the “seed of David.” As such simply, his human nature was like that of Mary and of David, fallen and sinful. It is denominated “sinful flesh” in Romans 8:3. It required perfect sanctification before it could be assumed into union with the second trinitarian person, and it obtained it through the miraculous conception. Says Pearson (On the Creed, art. 3): The original and total sanctification of the human nature was first necessary, to fit it for the personal union with the Word, who out of his infinite love humbled himself to become flesh and at the same time out of his infinite purity could not defile himself by becoming sinful flesh. The human nature was formed by the Spirit, and in its formation sanctified, and in its sanctification united to the Word. (see Christology, 29-35; Shedd on Romans 8:3)

Theologians have confined their attention mainly to the sanctification of Christ’s human nature, saying little about its justification. But a complete Christology must include the latter as well as the former. Any nature that requires sanctification requires justification, because sin is guilt as well as pollution. The Logos could not unite with a human nature taken from the virgin Mary and transmitted from Adam unless it had previously been delivered from both the condemnation and the corruption of sin. The idea of redemption also includes both justification and sanctification; and it is conceded that that portion of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with himself was redeemed. His own humanity was the “firstfruits” of his redemptive work: “Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Consequently, the doctrine is not fully constructed unless this side of it is presented. So far, then, as the guilt of Adam’s sin rested upon that unindividualized portion of the common fallen nature of Adam assumed by the Logos, it was expiated by the one sacrifice on Calvary. The human nature of Christ was prepared for the personal union with the Logos by being justified as well as sanctified: “God was manifested in the flesh, was justified (edikaiōthē)¹²⁵[Note: 25 125. ἐδικαιώθη] by (en)¹²⁶[Note: 26 126. ἐν] the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). Here, “flesh” denotes the entire humanity, psychical and physical, and it was “justified.” The justification in this instance, like that of the Old Testament believers, was proleptic, in view of the future atoning death of Christ.¹²⁷[Note: 27 127. WS: That the antithesis, here, between sarx (σάρξ = flesh) and pneuma (πνεῦμα = spirit) is the same as in1 Peter 3:18andRomans 1:3-4-namely, between the humanity and the divinity in Christ’s person-is plain from the context. If this be so, the dative is instrumental in both instances, denoting the agency by which the action of the verb is brought about: “God was manifested by the humanity and justified by the divinity.” The “justification” of the human nature was through the atonement made by the divine nature incarnate. This view of the antithesis between sarx (σάρξ) and pneuma (πνεῦμα = spirit) was taken generally by the older commentators. Of modern exegetes, it is adopted by Wiesinger.] (See supplement 4.1.18.) The gracious redemption of the humanity which the Logos assumed into union with himself is a familiar point in patristic Christology. Augustine (Enchiridion 36) teaches it as follows:

Wherefore was this unheard-of glory of being united with deity conferred on human nature-a glory which, as there was no antecedent merit, was of course wholly of grace-except that here those who have looked at the matter soberly and honestly might behold a clear manifestation of the power of God’s free grace and might understand that they are justified from their sins by the same grace which made the man Christ Jesus free from the possibility of sin? To the same effect, Athanasius (Against the Arians 2.61) says that Christ’s human nature was “first saved and redeemed (esōthē kai ēleuthepōthē)¹²⁸[Note: 28 128. ἐσώθη καὶ ἠλευθερώθη] and so became the means of our salvation and redemption.”

It is objected that traducianism implies division of substance and that all division implies extended material substance. Not necessarily. When it is said that that which is divisible is material, divisibility by man is meant. It is the separation of something that is visible, extended, and ponderable by means of material instruments. But another kind of divisibility is effected by the Creator by means of a law of propagation established for this purpose. God can divide and distribute a primary substance that is not visible, extended, and ponderable and yet is real by a method wholly different from that by which a man divides a piece of clay into two portions. There is an example of this even in the propagation of the body. Here, individual physical life is derived from specific physical life. But this is division of life. Imponderable physical substance is separated from imponderable physical substance. An individual body is not animated by the total physical life of the species, but by a derived part of it. That invisible principle that constitutes the reality and identity of the individual human body (pp. 465-66) is abscised invisibly and mysteriously from the specific physical nature of Man 1:129[Note: 29 129. WS: A species or specific nature is divisible, but an individual is not-as the etymology (individuus) implies.] But this process is wholly different from the division of extended and visible substance by human modes. Animal life in its last analysis is as invisible as psychical life and is as little capable of human divisibility. (See supplement 4.1.19.)

Accordingly, the advocates of traducianism distinguish between physical and psychical propagation. Maresius, a Reformed theologian of high authority, refers to this distinction in the following terms:

Whatever be the origin of the soul, these three things are to be held as fixed and certain: First, that the soul is immortal; second, that God is not the author of sin; third, that we are born from Adam corrupt and depraved. It would not be more difficult to harmonize the propagation of the soul with its immateriality and immortality than to harmonize the creation of each individual soul with the propagation of original sin. Only it must be remembered that the propagation in this instance is not a coarse (crassam) material propagation from animal substance, but a subtle spiritual derivation from a mental essence similar to that of the light of one candle propagating itself to another. (Elenctic Theology, controversy 11).

Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, 11) quotes the testimony of Riissen: The more common opinion is of those who hold that the soul is derived from propagation (ex traduce), that is, that the soul is propagated (traduci) from the soul. This occurs not through a cutting off or partitioning of the soul of the parent, but in a certain spiritual way, as light is kindled from light. But we hold all souls to be immediately created by God and to be implanted in creating.¹³⁰[Note: 30 130. Communior est sententia eorum, qui volunt animam esse ex traduce; i.e., animam traduci ex anima, non per decisionem aut partitionem animae paternae, sed modo quodem spirituali, ut lumen accenditur de lumine. Nos autem statuimus, animas omnes immediate a deo creari, et creando infundi.]

But if there may be division and derivation of invisible substance in the case of the body, there may be in the case of the soul. It is the invisibility and imponderability that constitutes the difficulty, and if this is no bar to propagation in respect to the physical part of man, it is not in respect to the psychical part. When God by means of his own law of propagation derives an individual soul from a specific psychical nature, he does not sever and separate substance in any material manner. The words of our Lord may be used by way of accommodation here: “That which is born of the spirit is spirit.” Psychical propagation yields a psychical product. When God causes an individual soul to be conceived and born simultaneously with the conception and birth of an individual body, that entity which he thus derives out of the psychical side of the specific human nature is really and truly mind, not matter. “God is the one who makes us personal,”¹³¹[Note: 31 131. deus est qui nos personat] says Augustine. God is the author of our personality. If he can create an entity which at the very first instant of its existence is a spiritual and self-determined substance, then certainly he can propagate an entity that is a spiritual and self-determined substance. The propagation of the soul involves no greater difficulty than its creation. If creation may be associated with both spirit and matter without materializing the former, so may propagation. We do not argue that if spirit is created, it must be material because matter is created. And neither should we argue that if spirit is propagated, it must be material because matter is propagated. God creates matter as matter and mind as mind. And he propagates matter as matter and mind as mind. We continually speak of the “growth of the soul” and “the development of the mind.” These are primarily physical terms, but we apply them literally to a spiritual substance, not supposing that we thereby materialize it. Why may we not, then, speak of the “propagation” or “derivation” of a soul without thereby materializing it?

If the distinction between creation and propagation is carefully observed, there is no danger of materialism in the doctrine of the soul’s propagation. For propagation cannot change the qualities of that which is being propagated. Propagation is only transmission of something that has already been created and already in existence. The quality is fixed by the original creative act. Propagation consequently can only yield what is given in creation. If we grant, therefore, that God did create the human species in its totality, as a complex of matter and mind, body and soul, physical substance and mental substance, it is plain that the mere individualizing of this species by propagation must leave matter and mind, body and soul, just as it finds them. Matter cannot be converted into mind by being conceived and born, and neither can mind be converted into matter by propagation. Propagation makes no alteration of qualities because propagation is transmission only. Both sides of man, the physical and the psychical, will therefore retain their original created qualities and characteristics in this process of procreation, which, it must be remembered, is the Creator’s work, carried on by means of laws which he has established for this very purpose of propagating a species and which is conducted under his immediate and continual providence. That which is body or physical will be propagated as body; and that which is soul or psychical will be propagated as soul; and this because propagation is merely transmission and makes no changes in the created qualities of that which is propagated or transmitted.¹³²[Note: 32 132. WS: Shedd, Theological Essays, 252; Delitzsch, Biblical Psychology 7.137.]

Propagation implies continuity of substance and immutability of properties. In the propagation of the body, there is continuity of substance and sameness of properties between the producing and the produced individuals, between the parents and the child. There is no creation ex nihilo of new substance and properties. In every instance of bodily conception, a certain amount of cellular substance which has been secreted and prepared by the invisible physical life issues and is transformed into a child’s embryo. The child, physically considered, is a part of the specific human nature transmitted through the parents and by their instrumentality formed into a separate individual body. It is an offspring from them. Now suppose this continuity of substance and unchangeableness of properties in the instance of psychical or spiritual substance, and we have the propagation of the soul. Spiritual substance is transmitted under the same providential law by which physical substance is. The soul of the child, simultaneously with his body, is derived psychically out of the common human nature, which is both psychical and physical, upon the traducian theory.

Traducianism would be liable to the charge of materialism if it maintained either of the two following positions: (1) that the soul is originated by propagation and (2) that the soul is propagated by physical propagation. Neither of these positions belong to the theory. In the first place, traducianism contends as strenuously as creationism that the human soul is the product of creative power; only, this power was exerted once on the sixth day, not millions of times subsequently. The origin of the soul is supernatural on this theory as well as on the other. The human soul as specific was not an evolution from physical substance, but a creation ex nihilo of spiritual substance. Propagation merely transmits and individualizes what was given in creation. In the second place, the transmission is not by a physical but a psychical propagation. There is nothing in the term propagate that necessarily implies materialism. Before this can be charged, it must be asked: What kind of substance is it that is propagated and by what kind of propagation? To assert that there is only one kind and mode of propagation and that propagation can only mean the propagation of matter is to beg the question.

It is objected that upon the traducian theory all the sinful acts of Adam and Eve-as well as the first sin-ought to be imputed to their posterity. The reply is that the sinful acts of Adam and Eve after the fall differed from the act of eating of the forbidden fruit in two respects: (a) They were transgressions of the moral law, not of the probationary statute; and (b) they were not committed by the entire race in and with Adam. In the first place, by divine arrangement in the covenant of works, it was only that particular act of disobedience that related to the positive statute given in Eden that was to be probationary. This statute and this transgression alone were to test the obedience of the race. God never gave this commandment a second time. The command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would be superfluous after the fall. Fallen man had got the knowledge. Consequently, all sins subsequent to this one peculiar transgression of a peculiar statute belonged to a different class from the first sin because they were transgressions of the moral law and the moral law was not the statute chosen by God to decide man’s probation. According to Romans 5:15-19 Adam and his posterity were to stand or fall according as they did not or did commit this one sin-and this only. Postlapsarian sins were violations of the moral law, not of the probationary law. Romans 5:13-14 teaches that infants sinned in Adam against the probationary statute only. They did not sin “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,” but sinned Adam’s transgression itself. They did not commit individual transgressions like Adam’s first transgression by sinning against either the law of conscience or the written law, but they sinned Adam’s identical transgression. The fact that “death passes” upon them, as upon all of Adam’s posterity, proves this.

Second, only the first act of sin is imputed, because the entire posterity were in Adam and Eve when it was committed, but ceased to be in them afterward. Unity of nature and participation are the ground of the imputation of the first sin. When this unity is broken even in the least, the ground is taken from under imputation, and imputation ceases. The conception of the first individual of the species destroys the original unity. When Cain was begotten, his separate individual existence began. He was no longer “in Adam”; and no longer an unindividualized part of the species. He was now the offspring of Adam and Eve, an individualized part of the human nature that was created on the sixth day. He received and inherited the corruption that was now in human nature and subsequently acted it out in individual transgressions. His natural and substantial union with his progenitors being at an end, whatever transgressions they might commit were no sins of his and whatever sins he might commit were no sins of theirs. With reference to the first sin committed by Adam and Eve before the conception of any individual man, St. Paul (Romans 5:18-19) says: “By one offense, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” With reference to the subsequent individual sins committed after the conception of the first individual man, Ezekiel 18:20 says: “The soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” When the advocate of representative union is asked why the sins of Adam after the first sin are not imputed to the posterity, his answer is that Adam ceased to represent; ceased to be a public person. In like manner, the advocate of natural union replies to the same inquiry that Adam ceased to be the race-unity postulated in order to the imputation of the first sin. The moment the individualization of the nature begins by propagation, the unity is at an end. If it be objected that at least the individual transgressions of Adam and Eve during the interval between the first sin and the conception of Cain must be imputed to the posterity because the entire posterity are still in Adam and Eve during this interval, the reply is that the imputation, even in this case, would not lie upon any individual persons of the posterity, for there are none, but only upon the nonindividualized nature. These personal transgressions of Adam, if charged at all, could be charged only upon the species. But the fact, already mentioned, namely, that it was the transgression of the Eden statute and not of the moral law that was made the probationary sin by divine arrangement, shows that the personal transgressions of Adam after his first sin would not be imputable even to the nonindividualized nature in him. The first two individuals included the species, but considered simply as individuals were not the species. Adam and Eve viewed as individuals were not the entire human race, but contained it. So Milton, Paradise Lost 9.414: Where likeliest he might find The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his destined prey. In Adam, as a common receptacle, the whole nature of man was reposited, from him to flow down in a channel to his posterity; for all mankind “is made of one blood” (Acts 17:26), so that according as this nature proves through his standing or falling, before he puts it out of his hands, accordingly it is propagated from him. Adam, therefore, falling and sinning, the nature became guilty and corrupted, and is so derived. Thus in him “all have sinned.” (Matthew Henry on Romans 5:12) The specific nature was a deposited invisible substance in the first human pair. The prepositions in and with in the clause sinned in and fell with imply this. As thus deposited by creation in Adam and Eve, it was to be transmitted. In like manner, every individual man along with his individuality receives, not as Adam did, the whole human nature but a fraction of it, to transmit and individualize. Every individual is to assist in perpetuating his species (Genesis 1:28).¹³³[Note: 33 133. WS: It is certainly an error when Baird (Elohim, 356) asserts that “the blood of Cain and Abel does not now flow in any human veins; that human nature is not any longer transmitted from them; but that Seth is the father of the present population of the earth.” The line of Seth was that of the church, and that of Cain of the world as the opposite of the church. Both individuals were concerned in the propagation of the species.] Every man, consequently, includes a portion of nonindividualized human nature transmitted to him from his ancestors immediately and from Adam primarily. When and so long as Adam and Eve were the only two individuals, the entire species was in two individuals. When and so long as Adam, Eve, and Cain were the only three individuals, the whole species was in three. At this present moment of time, the whole species consists of millions of individuals, namely, of the millions now living in this world together with the nonindividualized human nature in them and the disembodied millions in the other world who include no nonindividualized substance, because they “are as the angels of God” (Matthew 22:30). Thus it appears that the human nature was single, entire, and undivided only in those first two individuals in whom it was created. All individuals excepting the first two include each but a fractional part of human nature. A sin committed by a fraction is not a sin committed by the whole unity. Individual transgression is not the original transgression or Adam’s first sin. (See supplement 4.1.20.)

Hence it follows that what is strictly and purely individual in a human person must not be confounded with what is specific in him. As an individual, he sins individually; but what he does in this individual manner does not affect that portion of fallen human nature which he receives to transmit. This fractional part of the nature does not “sin in and with” the individual containing and transmitting it. He may be regenerated as an individual, but this does not regenerate that part of the human species which he includes and which he is to individualize by generation. His children are born unregenerate. Regeneration is individual only, not specific. It is founded upon an election out of an aggregate of separate individuals. Consequently, it does not sanctify that fraction of human nature which is deposited in each individual to be propagated. Neither do the individual transgressions of a natural man make the corrupt nature of his children any more corrupt. The nonindividualized nature in his person remains just as it came from Adam. Nor are his individual transgressions imputable to his children because the portion of human nature which he has received and which he transmits does not act with him and sin with him in his individual transgressions. It is a latent nature or principle which remains in a quiescent state, in reference to his individuality. It is inactive, as existing in him. It does not add to or subtract from his individual power. It constitutes no part of his individuality. Not until it is individualized and being separated from the progenitor becomes a distinct person by itself does it begin to act out the sinful disposition originated in it when Adam fell.

It is no valid objection to the doctrine of existence in Adam and in foregoing ancestors that it is impossible to explain the mode. The question “how can these things be?” as in the instance of Nicodemus must be answered by the affirmation that it is a fact and a mystery. It is no refutation of the doctrine to ask how the nature exists before it is individualized or procreated, any more than it is a refutation of the doctrine of the resurrection to ask how the invisible substance of a human body still continues to exist after death. We know the fact from Scripture; and science also confirms it by its maxim that there is no annihilation of rudimental substance in the created universe. The body of Julius Caesar is still in being, as to its fundamental invisible substance, whatever that substance may be. Resurrection, though miraculous, is not the creation of a body ex nihilo. In like manner, the elementary invisible substance of the individual Julius Caesar, both as to soul and body, was in existence between the time of the creation of the whole human species on the sixth day and the time of the conception of Julius Caesar. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 37 states that the bodies of believers, “being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection.” This implies that the believer’s body, as to its invisible substance, continues to exist for hundreds or thousands of years between its death and its resurrection. But this kind of existence is no more mysterious than the existence of the human nature in Adam and its continued existence between Adam and the year 1875. In one sense, the posterity of Adam are as old as Adam, the children as old as the parents. The human nature out of which all individuals are derived was created on the sixth day, and all sustain the same relation to it so far as the time of its creation is concerned. The Seyn¹³⁴[Note: 34 134. being] of all was then, though the Daseyn¹³⁵[Note: 35 135. existence] was not; the noumenon, though not the phenomenon, was in existence.

It is important to distinguish traits that are derived and inherited from secondary ancestors, either immediate or remote, and traits that are derived and inherited from the first ancestors. To inherit the gout from one’s father is very different from inheriting the carnal mind from Adam. Such inherited idiosyncrasies are not sinful, though they tempt to sin. A hankering for alcohol or opium may be inherited from a grandfather or father without culpability for it; but pride and enmity toward God are inherited from Adam and are accompanied with a sense of guilt. To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary trait. A choleric temper is not guilt. But envy and hatred are. The testimony of conscience in each case is different. These qualities inherited from secondary ancestors may run themselves out in a few generations. But original sin never runs itself out. The former are conquerable without grace; some persons overcome their hankering for alcohol and opium without regeneration. But original sin is unconquerable without regeneration.

Derivation and inheritance of sinful character is compatible with responsibility for sinful character, provided that while it is derived and inherited at a secondary point, it is self-originated at a primary one. If sinful character be derived at both the primary and the secondary points, then responsibility is impossible. The individual man derives and inherits his sinful disposition from his immediate ancestors, but originated it in his first ancestors. He is born sinful from his father and mother, but was created holy in Adam and Eve. But if he had derived his sinfulness at both points, if sin in Adam had been derived from God, then its transmission from Adam to the posterity would not have involved any responsibility or fault. In Psalms 50:5 David mentions the fact that he was born sinful, as an aggravation of his particular act of adultery, not as an excuse for it. It evinced the depth and intensity of his wickedness. This could not be, if to be born sinful is the same thing as to be created sinful. The difficulty in regard to existence in Adam, the first ancestor, is really no greater than the difficulty in regard to existence in the immediate ancestors. The mystery is only farther off.

S U P P L E M E N T S

4.1.1 (see p. 431). Augustine argues against the doctrine of preexistence in Forgiveness and Baptism 1.31: “Perhaps, however, the now exploded and rejected opinion must be resumed that souls which once sinned in their heavenly abode descend by stages and degrees to bodies suited to their deserts and as a penalty for their previous life are more or less tormented by corporeal punishments. They who entertain such an opinion are unable to escape the perplexities of this question: Whence does it come to pass that a person shall from his earliest boyhood show greater moderation, mental excellence, and temperance and shall to a great extent conquer lust and yet live in such a place as to be unable to hear the grace of Christ preached; while another man, although addicted to lust and covered with crime, shall be so directed as to hear and believe and be baptized? Where, I say, did they acquire such diverse deserts? If they had indeed passed any part of their life in heaven, so as to be thrust down or to sink down to this world and to tenant such bodily receptacles as are congruous to their own former life, then, of course, that man ought to be supposed to have led the better life previous to his present mortal body, who did not much deserve to be burdened with it, so as both to have a good disposition and to be importuned by milder desires, which he could easily overcome; and yet he did not deserve to have that grace preached to him whereby he could be delivered from the ruin of the second death. Whereas the other, who was hampered with a grosser body as a penalty, so they suppose, for worse deserts and was accordingly possessed of obtuser affections, while he was in the ardor of his lust succumbing to the flesh and by his wicked life aggravating his former sins, which had brought him to such a pass, either heard upon the cross, ‘Today shall you be with me in paradise,’ or else joined himself to some apostle by whose preaching he became a changed man. I am at a loss to know what answer they can give to this, who wish us to maintain God’s righteousness by human conjectures and, knowing nothing of the depths of grace, have woven webs of improbable fable.” In Letter 166.27 to Jerome, Augustine says: “That souls sin in another earlier life and that for their sins in that state of being they are cast down into bodies as prisons, I do not believe. I reject and protest against such an opinion. I do this, in the first place, because they affirm that this is accomplished by means of some incomprehensible revolutions, so that, after I know not how many cycles, the soul must return again to the same burden of corruptible flesh and to the endurance of punishment-than which opinion, I do not know that anything more horrible can be conceived. In the next place, who is the righteous man gone from the earth, about whom we should not, if what they say be true, feel afraid, at least, lest sinning in Abraham’s bosom he should be cast down into the flames which tormented the rich man in the parable? For why may not the soul sin after leaving the body, if it can sin before entering it? Finally, to have sinned in Adam, in whom the apostle says all have sinned, is one thing; but it is a wholly different thing to have sinned, I know not where, outside of Adam, and then, because of this, to be thrust into Adam, that is, into the body which is derived from Adam, as into a prisonhouse.”

4.1.2 (see p. 431). The following series of extracts presents Augustine’s traducianism. Notwithstanding his refusal to declare positively for either theory, no such series in favor of creationism can be found in his works. “Those sins of infancy are not so said to be another’s, as if they did not belong to the infants at all, inasmuch as all of them sinned in Adam when in his nature, and by virtue of that power whereby he was able to produce them, were all as yet the one Adam; but they are called another’s (aliena), because as yet they were not living their own [individual] lives, but the life of the one man contained whatsoever was in his future posterity” (Forgiveness and Baptism 3.14). “Now observe, I pray you, how the circumspect Pelagius felt the question about the soul to be a very difficult one, for he says, ‘If the soul is not propagated, but the flesh alone, then the latter alone deserves punishment, and it is unjust that the soul, which is newly made, and that not out of Adam’s substance, should bear the sin of another committed so long ago.’ He does not say absolutely, ‘Because the soul is not propagated.’ Wherefore I, too, on my side, answer this question with no hasty assertion: If the soul is not propagated, where is the justice that what has been but recently created and is quite free from the contagion of sin should be compelled in infants to endure the passions and other torments of the flesh and, what is more terrible still, even the attacks of evil spirits?” (Forgiveness and Baptism 3.18).

“Let it not be said to me that the words of Zechariah, ‘He forms the spirit of man within him,’ and of the psalmist, ‘He forms their hearts severally’ (Septuagint), support the opinion that souls are created one by one. For to create means more than to form. It is written, nevertheless, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God’; yet it cannot be supposed that a soul here desires to be made before it has begun to exist. [“Create,” consequently, is used here in a secondary sense.] Nor is your [Jerome’s] opinion, which [if proved from Scripture] I would willingly make my own, supported by that sentence in Ecclesiastes, ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.’ Nay, it rather favors those who think that all souls are derived from one; for they say that as the dust returns to the earth as it was, and yet the body of which this is said returns not to the first man from whom it was derived, but to the earth, from which the first man was made, the spirit, in like manner, though derived from the spirit of the first man, does not return to him, but to the Lord, by whom it was given to our first parent. Meanwhile, though I do not yet know which of these opinions is to be preferred, this one thing I profess as my deliberate conviction, that the opinion which is true does not conflict with that most firm and well-grounded article in the faith of the church that infant children, even when they are newly born, can be delivered from perdition in no other way than through the grace of Christ’s name, which he has given in his sacraments” (Letter 166.26, 28 to Jerome, a.d. 415). “The words of the scriptural passage, ‘The spirit returns to God who gave it,’ are somewhat adverse to these two opinions, namely, the one which supposes each soul to be created in its own body and the one which supposes each soul to introduce itself into its own body spontaneously. But there is no difficulty in showing that the words are consistent with either of the other two pinions, namely, that all souls are derived by propagation from the one first created or that, having been created and kept in readiness with God, they are given to each body as required” (Letter 143.9 to Marcellinus, a.d. 412). “Whether all souls are derived by propagation from the first [soul], or are in the case of each individual specially created, or, being created apart from the body, are sent into it, or introduce themselves into it of their own accord, without doubt this creature endowed with reason-namely, the human soul-after the entrance of sin does not govern its own body absolutely according to its free will. Whoever is disposed to maintain any one of these four theories of the soul’s origin must bring forward either from the Scriptures passages which do not admit any other interpretation or reasonings founded on premises so obviously true that to call them in question would be madness” (Letter 143.6, 11 to Marcellinus, a.d. 412). “There are four opinions as to the manner of the soul’s incarnation: (1) That all other souls are derived from the one which was given to the first man; (2) that for each individual a new soul is made; (3) that souls already in existence somewhere are sent by divine act into the bodies; or (4) glide into them of their own accord” (Letter 166.7 to Jerome, a.d. 410). “I know that you [Jerome] are not one of those who have begun of late to utter certain new and absurd opinions, alleging that there is no guilt derived from Adam which is removed by baptism in the case of infants. If I knew that you held this view, I would certainly neither address this question [namely, how the dying infant can have contracted guilt requiring the sacrament of baptism] to you nor think that it ought to be put to you at all. Teach me, therefore, I beseech you, what I may teach others, and tell me this: If souls are from day to day made for each individual separately at birth, where, in the case of infant children, is sin committed by these souls so that they require the remission of sin in the sacrament of Christ because of the sin of Adam from whom the sinful flesh has been derived? Of, if they do not sin, how is it compatible with the justice of the Creator that, because of their being united to mortal bodies derived from another person, they are so brought under the bond of the sin of that other that, unless they be rescued by the church, perdition overtakes them, although it is not in their own power to secure that they be rescued by the grace of baptism? Where, therefore, is the justice of the condemnation of so many thousands of souls, which in the deaths of infant children leave this world without the benefit of the Christian sacrament, if, being newly created, they have no preceding sin [derived from Adam]? Seeing, therefore, that we may not say concerning God either that he compels them to become sinners or that he punishes innocent souls; and, seeing that on the other hand, it is not lawful for us to deny that nothing else than perdition is the doom of the souls even of little children which have departed from the body without the sacrament of Christ, tell me, I implore you, where anything can be found to support the opinion that souls are not all derived from that one soul of the first man, but are each created separately for each individual as Adam’s soul was made for him” (Letter 166.6, 10 to Jerome, a.d. 415).

Odo, at first abbot of Tournai and afterward bishop of Cambray, adopted traducianism, but not as Augustine and subsequent traducianists generally did by postulating a complex specific nature which is both psychical and physical and furnishes the substance of which the individual soul and body are constituted by division and derivation. His specific nature is physical substance only, that is, material seed which is made psychical by the modifying influence and action upon it of the individual soul in the act of propagation. This feature is not an improvement and introduces difficulties that do not attach to the other view. Odo died in 1113. His treatise Concerning Original Sin is in Bibliotheca maxima patrum 21.221-22 and Migne’s Patrology 160.1071-72. The following account is taken from it:

“The orthodox,” he says (book 2), “favor creationism and declare that we were in Adam only according to the flesh. They deny that the soul is propagated. There are, nevertheless, many who derive the soul, like the body, by traduction or propagation. The reasons which they assign are not to be despised, so that we shall discuss both views, and first we examine those of the orthodox. The orthodox view has this difficulty. If I have my body from Adam and not my soul (anima) from Adam but from God alone, since sin is in the soul and not in the body, how can I be said to have sinned in Adam? Adam sinned, and sin was in his soul alone, not in his body; but my soul, in which my sin is, I do not have from him. How then am I said to have sinned in him? If sin were in the body, I might rightly be said to have sinned in him because my body was in him; but as sin is not in the body, I cannot properly be said to have sinned in Adam.”

Odo then defines the relation of the individual to the species and the difference between specific and individual transgression: “Sin is spoken of in two ways: personal and natural. Natural [sin] is the sin in which we are born and which we derive from Adam, in whom all have sinned. Indeed, my soul was in him-in species, not in person; not as an individual, but in the common nature. Now, the nature of every human soul was guilty of sin in Adam. Consequently, every human soul is culpable according to its nature, though not according to its person. So, the sin by which we sinned in Adam is indeed natural to me, but personal in Adam. In Adam it was more severe; it is less so in me. For I sinned in him not in terms of who I am, but what I am. I as a man [what I am] sinned, but Odo [who I am] did not. I the substance sinned, not I the person. But because substance does not exist except in a person, the sin of the substance is also the sin of the person, though not personal. Now, personal sin is what I myself commit-I in the sense of who I am, not what I am. Personal sin is that in which I Odo sin, not man; in which I the person sin, not the nature. But because a person does not exist without a nature, the sin of the person is also of the nature, though not natural” (book 2).¹³⁶[Note: 36 136. Dicitur duobus modis peccatum, personale et naturale. Et naturale est cum quo nascimur, et quod ab Adam trahimus in quo omnes peccavimus. In ipso enim erat anima mea, specie non persona, non individua sed communi natura. Nam omnis humanae animae natura erat in Adam obnoxia peccato. Et ideo omnis humana anima culpabilis est secundum suam naturam, etsi non secundum suam personam. Ita peccatum quo peccavimus in Adam, mihi quidem naturale est, in Adam vero personale. In Adam gravius, levius in me; nam peccavi in eo non qui sum, sed quod sum. Peccavi homo (quod sum), sed non Odo (qui sum). Peccavi substantia, non persona; et quia substantia non est nisi in persona, peccatum substantiae est etiam personae, sed non personale. Peccatum vero personale est quod facio ego qui sum, non hoc quod sum; quo pecco Odo, non homo; quo pecco persona, non natura; sed quia persona non est sine natura, peccatum personae est etiam naturae, sed non naturale.] “Just as something concerning the universal is said in place of the individual, even so something is said of the part concerning the whole. Thus, on account of the soul alone it is said that the individual man is a sinner, who possesses a body and soul together. Sin does not pertain to the body, but nevertheless the sinner is one who has a body. It is not, therefore, the soul alone that is said to have sinned in Adam, but even he himself through the soul-namely, the whole composed of many parts through the one part. Therefore, Adam is said to have sinned because the soul which he himself had sinned. And if Adam sinned, man sinned, because if this man himself sinned, human nature, which is man, sinned. But at that point human nature in its entirety was in him, nor was the human species (specialis homo) located anywhere else. Therefore, when the person sinned, namely, the man himself, the entire nature sinned, that is to say, the common nature of man (communis homo). In the sin of the person, the man of the common nature was made culpable. Adam made such a human nature in himself as even would be handed down to his posterity after him. It was necessary that what human nature had become through the foolishness of a sinner must be transferred to his posterity through justice” (book 3).¹³⁷[Note: 37 137. Sicut aliquid de universali dicitur pro individuo, sic aliquid dicitur pro parte de toto; ut propter animam solam dicatur peccator homo individuus, qui animam simul habet et corpus. Ad corpus peccatum non pertinet, et tamen peccator est qui corpus habet; non igitur anima sola peccase dicitur in Adam, sed et ipse per animam, scilicet totus ex pluribus partibus per unam. Dicitur ergo et Adam pecasse, quia peccavit anima quam habuit ipse. Et si peccavit Adam, peccavit homo; quia si peccavit ipse homo, peccavit humana natura quae est homo. Sed humana natura tota tunc erat in ipso, nec usquam erat alibi specialis homo. Cum ergo peccavit persona, scilicet ipse homo, peccavit tota natura, scilicet communis homo. Et in peccato personae, culpabilis factus est homo communis naturae. Et qualem Adam fecit humanam naturam in se, talem posteris etiam post se. Et qualis facta est humana natura per insipientiam peccatoris, talis necesse est transfundatur in posteros per justitiam.]

Odo would explain the propagation of the soul by the fact that the soul is the animating, energizing, and governing part of the man. The life and force of the body come from the mind or spirit behind it; for when the spirit leaves the body, this has neither life nor force. In man the material sensations of the five senses are spiritualized by the higher intellectual principle which penetrates them and makes them to be human sensation instead of merely brutal and animal. The bodily sensations of a man are of a higher grade than those of a beast. And, generally, it is the mind in the human body and using it that makes it and its sensations to be what they are. Now this, says Odo, holds true of the bodily act of propagation, as well as of all other bodily acts. The merely material and physical semen is rationalized and spiritualized by the mental life which ejects it, so that the human embryo becomes both psychical and physical, animal and rational, while the brute embryo remains only physical and animal. The human embryo is the resultant of one solely physical ovum. It is not the resultant of an ovum which contains a rational principle and is a combination of both psychical and physical substance from which the individual soul and body issue. There is no such thing as this latter. But the merely physical ovum is animated and rationalized by the life of reason which is in the mind or spirit of the man, so that the human embryo in this way comes to have two principles, an animal and a rational, and is both body and soul. The brute embryo contains only one principle, the animal, because the ovum is not modified by the life of reason, of which the brute is destitute. This action of the rational soul in propagation is evinced in the mental and human pleasure connected with coition, which is higher than the wholly brutal and animal pleasure of the dog or hog in the same act. The following extracts give Odo’s explanation:

“Those who hold to the traducian doctrine, the argument of whom we have employed after the manner of the orthodox, say that every soul comes from a rootstock (de traduce),¹³⁸[Note: 38 138. rootstock (according to Irven Resnick in Odo of Tournai’s On Original Sin and a Disputation with the Jew, Leo, concerning the Advent of Christ, the Son of God [trans. I. M. Resnick; Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1994], 70)] that is, the soul comes through a seed (semen) from the soul, just as its body is propagated through a seed from a body or a tree from a tree. Thus, they say that the seed’s power (vim seminariam) is in the soul, just as in the body. In animals, unless the seed of the parent draws the nutritive power (vim vegetabilem),¹³⁹[Note: 39 139. nutritive power (according to Resnick in Odo of Tournai’s On Original Sin, 70)] it will not progress to the creation of subsequent offspring. How does a seed implanted in the female grow unless it draws upon the nutritive power of the soul (vim animae vegetabilem)? How will the seed sown in the womb of a pregnant woman grow unless it is animated somehow? Let the parent’s urine or spittle or whatever else be introduced (infundantur) into [the womb] and no birth or child will result. Nor is an animal ever born by such an infusion, because an infusion such as this lacks animation. Such an infusion draws no power of the soul and consequently results in no birth nor does anything grow from this.… Therefore, the body’s seed draws the soul’s seed with it, namely, the power of growth (vim vegetationis), which nourishes the corporeal seed into a human form, [this same power] growing with it into a rational soul. Consequently, just as a particle that is not a human body flows from a human body in sowing the seed, even so a particle that is not a human soul flows from a human soul like a seed. And just as the lust of the body (pruritus corporis)¹⁴⁰[Note: 40 140. lust (according to Resnick in Odo of Tournai’s On Original Sin, 71)] typically does not occur without the soul’s delight, even so, the lust (pruritus) does not eject the seminal fluid from the body unless at the same time the soul’s delight should produce the seed’s power (seminarium vim) from the soul-that is, the nutritive power (vegetabilitatem)-so that it might become the nutritive power of the human soul, just as the seminal fluid is the seed of the body. Just as the causes proceed together-namely, delight and lust (pruritus)-even so, the effects follow together, that is, the nutritive power (vis vegetabilis) and seminal fluid progress at the same time with the one growing-the one into a human form and the other into a rational soul. From that point on they remain together in one person until death. The conjoined causes join their effects at the same time into one individual, which consists of body and soul.… Take away the soul, and the body does not produce seed; it makes seed, therefore it has a soul. Therefore, the seed has the nutritive power (vim vegetabilem) from the soul. Now, it has this power either from the soul or from the body. If this power is from the body, then take away the soul and implant (funde) the seed, and we shall grant you the palm of victory if you see any offspring result. But if it cannot happen, then admit the truth and grant the nutritive power to the soul. Even though the power itself is not the soul, nevertheless through it the soul is propagated from a soul and the seed of the propagating soul becomes the soul” (book 3).¹⁴¹[Note: 41 141. Dicunt seminatores animarum, quorum rationem post orthodoxos insumpsimus dicere, quod omnis anima venit de traduce, id est anima per semen de anima, sicut ejus corpus per semen propagatur de corpore, vel arbor de arbore, et sic esse vim seminariam in anima, quemadmodum in corpore. In animalibus enim nisi vim vegetabilem trahat semen parentis, non proficit ad creationem (i.e., generationem) sequentis prolis, nam semen fusum in femina, quomodo pullulat nisi vim animae vegetabilem trahat? Quomodo concrescit in viscera praegnantis seminatum, nisi utcunque fuerit animatum? Infundantur urina de parente, vel sputum, vel aliud quidquam, non proficit in partum, vel in prolem ullam, nec unquam natum est animal tali infusione, quia talis infusio caret animatione. Nullam vim animae talis infusio trahit, ideo non prospicit in partum, nec inde pullulat aliquid.… Trahit ergo secum semen corporis semen animae, scilicet vim vegetationis quae corporeum semen vegetet in humanam formam, ipse cum eo succrescens in rationalem animam, ut sicut particula quae non est humanum corpus ab humano corpore fluit in sementem, sic particula quae non est humana anima ab humana anima decurrat ut semen. Et sicut pruritus corporis non solet sine delectatione animae fieri, sic pruritus a corpore non excutit seminarium liquorem nisi simul animae delectatio producat ab anima seminariam vim, id est vegetabilitatem ut sit humanae animae vis vegetabilis, sicut seminarius liquor semen est corporis. Et sicut simul procedunt causae, scilicet delectatio et pruritus, sic simul sequuntur effectus, id est vis vegetabilis et liquor seminarius simul etiam cum crescendo proficiunt, hoc usque ad humanam formam, illud ad rationalem animam, inde simul manent in una persona usque ad mortem. Causae conjunctae simul jungunt suos effectus in unum individuum ejus quod constat ex animae et corpore.… Tolle animam, non facit corpus semen; facit semen, habet igitur animam. Habet ergo semen ab anima vim vegetabilem. Aut habet ab anima, aut a corpore. Si a corpore, tolle animam et funde semen, et dabimus palmam tibi victoriae si videamus sequentem prolem. Si autem non potest fieri, confitere veritatem, et animae concede vim vegetabilem. Et licet ipsa vis non sit anima, per eam tamen ab anima propagatur anima, et fit semen animae propagantis animam.]

4.1.3 (see p. 432). The Arminian Watson (Institutes 2.82) favors traducianism. “Some contend,” he says, “that the soul is ex traduce; others that it is by immediate creation. As to the metaphysical part of this question, we can come to no satisfactory conclusion. The Scriptures, however, appear to be more in favor of the doctrine of traduction. ‘Adam fathered a son in his own likeness.’ ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’; which refers certainly to the soul as well as the body. The usual argument against the traduction of the human spirit is that the doctrine of its generation tends to materialism. But this arises from a mistaken view of that in which the procreation of a human being lies; which does not consist in the production out of nothing of either of the parts of which the compounded being, man, is constituted, but in uniting them substantially with one another. The matter of the body is not, then, first made, but disposed; nor can it be supposed that the soul is by that act first produced. That belongs to a higher power; and then the only question is whether all souls were created in Adam and are transmitted by a law peculiar to themselves, which is always under the control of the will of that same watchful providence of whose constant agency in the production and ordering of the kinds, sexes, and circumstances of the animal creation we have abundant proof; or whether they are immediately created. The tenet of the soul’s descent appears to have most countenance from the language of Scripture, and it is no small confirmation of it that when God designed to incarnate his own Son he stepped out of the ordinary course and found a sinless human nature immediately by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

4.1.4 (see p. 433). The difficulty which the creationist finds in retaining the Augustinian anthropology generally and particularly the doctrine that original sin had a free origin and is damnable for every man is seen in his disposition to emphasize the natural union of Adam and his posterity. For example, Aquinas, though formally rejecting traducianism, nevertheless often asserts the unity of nature between them. Says Neander (History 4.495), “Thomas Aquinas declares, it is true, against traducianism; at the same time, however, he says all the descendants of Adam are to be considered as one man, by reason of the community of nature received from the father of the race.” Aquinas’s argument against traducianism is given in his Summa 1.118.

Hagenbach (§248) says that “Luther taught traducianism, followed by most of the Lutheran divines, with the exception of Calixtus. Gerhard (9.8.118) left it to the philosophers to define the modus propagationis,¹⁴²[Note: 42 142. mode/way of propagation] but he himself taught (§116) that ‘the souls of those begotten from Adam and Eve were not created nor even generated, but were propagated.’¹⁴³[Note: 43 143. Animas eorum qui Adamo et Eva progeniti fuissent non creatas, neque etiam generatas, sed propagatas fuisse] Similar views were expressed by Calovius (3.1081) and Hollaz (1.5 Q. 9): ‘The human soul is not created immediately but is generated by the mediation of the fertilized seed from the parents and is transferred (traducitur) into the children. The soul is not generated from transference (ex traduce) without the fertilized seed, as if from a material principle, but it is propagated through transference (per traducem) or with the fecund (prolifico) seed mediating as a vehicle, so to speak.’¹⁴⁴[Note: 44 144. Anima humana non immediate creatur, sed mediante semine foecundo a parentibus generatur et in liberos traducitur. Non generatur anima ex traduce sine semine foecundo tanquam principio materiali, sed per traducem seu mediante semine prolifico tanquam vehiculo, propagatur] The Renewed Confession of the True Lutheran Faith, point 22¹⁴⁵[Note: 45 145. Consensus Repetitus, Fidei verae Lutheranae, Punct. 22.] (in Henke, 18), declares: ‘We profess and teach that man fathers man, and that not only with respect to the body but with respect to the soul as well. We reject those who teach that in individual men individual souls do not arise from propagation but are at first created ex nihilo and infused when the fetuses are conceived and prepared for animation in the wombs of their mothers.’ ”¹⁴⁶[Note: 46 146. Profitemur et docemus, hominem generare hominem, idque non tantum quoad corpus sed etiam animam. Rejicimus eos qui docent in hominibus singulis animas singulas non ex propagine oriri sed ex nihilo tunc primum creari et infundi cum in uteris matrum foetus concepti atque ad animationem praeperati sunt.]

4.1.5 (see p. 437). The prime importance of the doctrine of the original unity of Adam and his posterity appears from the fact that it is only at this point in man’s history that his self-determination in the origin of sin and responsibility for it can be found. At the instant when Adam and his posterity as an included specific nature were created ex nihilo, this unity was holy and self-determined in holiness; yet mutably be so, because it was not infinitely so. Self-determination to sin was possible, but not in the least necessary. At the instant when Adam and the included human nature inclined or self-determined to evil, he might have persisted in the holy self-determination which he was already exerting. At this point his destiny and that of his posterity is placed by his maker in his free agency. But when he has acted and a new self-determination to evil has occurred, he has lost his original freedom to good and become enslaved to evil. He can no longer self-determine or incline to holiness; and yet his self-determination or inclination to sin is and continues to be unforced self-motion. When a man commits suicide, it is in his power at the instant of the suicide to continue to live; but after the suicide, to live is no longer in his power. At no point subsequent to Adam and Eve in Eden can man be found upon a position of holiness and innocency, with plenary power to remain in it, from which he falls by an act of free self-determination-a state of things necessary, in order justly to charge him with the guilt of both original sin and actual transgression of both native depravity and sinful conduct and justly to expose him to eternal death.

4.1.6 (see p. 438). The employment of the term Adam in Genesis 1:1-31 to denote the species and in Genesis 2:1-25 to denote only the individual Adam might as well be cited by the rationalistic critic to prove his hypothesis of a non-Mosaic composite origin of the Pentateuch by several authors as the fact that Elohim is employed in it and subsequently Jehovah to denote the divine being. Moses in the Pentateuch presents subjects comprehensively, in their various parts and aspects. Consequently, in one place the Supreme Being is described in his abstract and universal character as the deity; and in another in his particular relation to his church or covenant people. Hence the employment sometimes of Elohim, sometimes of Jehovah, and sometimes of both together. So, likewise, he presents a comprehensive view of man, now as specific and now as individual, and hence the double use of “Adam.” The rationalistic critic assumes that the inspired writer views subjects as he himself does, bit by bit, and presents them only in a piecemeal manner.

4.1.7 (see p. 445). The injustice of punishing a person for a sin in which he had no kind of participation gets voice in the passionate utterance of Lucrece, as she sees the face of Helen in the “skillful painting made for Priam’s Troy”:

Show me the strumpet that began this stir, That with my nails her beauty I may tear.

Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;

Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here; And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye, The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

Why should the private pleasure of someone Become the public plague of many mo?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so, Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe; For one’s offense why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?

4.1.8 (see p. 449). Owen, like Turretin, avails himself of Augustine when necessary, but oscillates between natural and representative union as he does: “The first sin in the world was on many accounts the greatest sin that ever was in the world. It was the sin, as it were, of human nature, wherein there was a conspiracy of all individuals; ‘we all were that one man’¹⁴⁷[Note: 47 147. omnes eramus unus ille homo] (Augustine); in that one man, or that one sin, ‘we all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). It left not God one subject, as to moral obedience, on the earth, nor the least ground for any such to be unto eternity. When the angels sinned, the whole race or kind did not prevaricate. Thousand thousands of them and ten thousand times ten thousands continued in their obedience (Daniel 7:10)” (Forgiveness in Works 14.136 [ed. Russell]). The phraseology of Owen here shows that the Augustinian doctrine of the Adamic unity was held hesitatingly by him with respect to the point of literal substantial unity. He qualifies the assertion that the first sin was “the sin of human nature” by the clause as it were. He also speaks of the angels as a “race” or “kind”: a term which taken strictly is not applicable to them. Witsius (Apostles’ Creed, diss. 26) combines natural and representative union: “And so it is written: ‘The first man Adam,’ the natural and federal head of the rest of mankind, ‘was made a living soul.’ ”

4.1.9 (see p. 452). In his commentary on Genesis 2:17, Paraeus, as quoted by Landis (Original Sin, 231), declares that “all the posterity of Adam do communicate in the original offense, not only by participation of a sinful nature, but likewise in the act of sinning itself (sed etiam ipso peccandi actu). We all, therefore, when we suffer for his sin, do not suffer simply for the sin of another, but also for our own. And it is said to be imputed to us all not as simply another’s, but also as our own. Neither as being innocent, but as companions in the offense, and together guilty with him (non ut simpliciter alienum, sed etiam ut nostrum; nec ut insontibus, sed ut delicti sociis, et una reis).”¹⁴⁸[Note: 48 148. not simply as another’s, but even as our own; neither as innocent, but as companions of the offense, and guilty together with him] Owen (Arminianism, chap. 7) declares that “Scripture is clear that the sin of Adam is the sin of us all, not only by propagation and communication (whereby not his singular [individual] fault, but something of the same nature is devised to us), but also by an imputation of his actual transgression unto us all, his singular [individual] transgression being by this means made ours. The grounds of this imputation may be all reduced to his being a common person: (1) As we were then in him and parts of him. (2) As he sustained the place of our whole nature in the covenant God made with him.” Such a statement as this of Owen agrees with traducianism, not with creationism.

4.1.10 (see p. 454). The Westminster definition of Adam as a “public person” is so different from that of Christ as a “public person” that it is impossible to maintain, on the ground of it, either that both unions are representative or that both are natural and substantial. On the contrary, the definition implies that one is natural and the other representative. Adam as a “public person” is described as “the root of mankind” (Westminster Confession 6.3) and one from whom “all mankind descend by ordinary generation” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). Christ as a “public person” is described only as “the head of his church” (52). Of Adam it is said that “all mankind were in him” (92); of Christ it is only said that he is “the head of his members” (83). The two “public persons,” together with the two unions and the two covenants connected with them, may be thus described: (1) The legal covenant of works being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind originally constituting a common unity and descending from him by ordinary generation specifically and really sinned in him and fell with him in the first transgression. (2) The evangelical covenant of grace being made with Christ as a public person, not for himself only but for his elect, all of mankind who are united to him by faith representatively and putatively suffered with him in his atoning death and obeyed with him in his perfect obedience. Consequently, the imputation of the sin of Adam to all men is real and meritorious; of the righteousness of Christ to elect men is nominal and gratuitous. The clause all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation is not limiting, as if there were some of mankind who do not so descend and who therefore did not sin in him, but is descriptive. All mankind are a total distinguished by descent from Adam by ordinary generation and by reason of this descent sinned in and with him when they were all a common specific nature in him. Descent by propagation proves an original unity of the posterity and progenitors, and this unity proves the commission of the “one offense” which made the unity guilty and corrupt. The universalism that has infected Calvinistic theology of late originates in the erroneous assumption that Christ is united with the whole human race in the same specific and universal way that Adam was. Hence the assertion that “Christ has redeemed the human race.” The scriptural statement is that he has “redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68); and the Westminster statement is that he has “redeemed his church.” The doctrine of a discriminating election of some and preterition of others, which applies to redemption and the representative headship of Christ but not to apostasy and the natural headship of Adam, is vehemently opposed by all who make redemption to be as wide as apostasy and contend that “as all die” without exception “in Adam,” so “all shall be made alive” without exception “in Christ.” The great difference between the two kinds of “public person” needs to be urged in this reference, so that the natural and universal race-union of Adam and his posterity shall be marked off from the spiritual and individual union of Christ and his people. This is one of the many instances in which the value of accurate dogmatic statements appears. If a certain definition of Christ as a public person is adopted, universal salvation necessarily follows; if it is rejected, it is necessarily excluded.

Another way in which universalism is introduced into Calvinism is by claiming that the covenant of grace is made with all mankind instead of with a part of it. The only covenant which God has made with all mankind is the legal covenant of which the terms are “this do and you shall live.” The terms of the covenant of grace are “I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). This promise is not universal. Accordingly, Westminster Larger Catechism 30 declares that “God does not leave all men to perish in the estate of sin and misery, … but of his mere love and mercy delivers his elect out of it and brings them into an estate of salvation by the second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace”; and also that covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed” (31). At the same time all mankind are represented as obtaining a certain kind of benefit from the covenant of grace. This is the offer to them of redemption on condition of their own faith and repentance, but not the effectual application of redemption by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, which latter is confined to the elect: “The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provides and offers to [all] sinners a mediator and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him promises and gives his Holy Spirit to all his elect to work in them that faith with all other saving graces and to enable them unto all holy obedience” (32).

According to these statements, the promise in the covenant of grace to the elect is absolute and unconditional, but to the nonelect is relative and conditional. The success of the covenant in the former instance is certain because the fulfillment on the part of the elect is secured by the action of God in overcoming their resistance and inclining and enabling them to keep it: “I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts,” says God. This inward writing of the law is not dependent upon man’s action, but wholly upon God’s. But the success of the covenant in the latter instance is uncertain because its fulfillment on the part of the nonelect is dependent upon their action. If they will believe they shall be saved; but God does not promise to subdue their unbelief by “working faith in them, with all other saving graces.” No better account of this subject has been given than by Bunyan in his “Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ”:

“We call that an absolute promise that is made without any condition. That is an absolute promise of God, or of Christ, which makes over to this or that man any saving spiritual blessing without a condition to be performed on his part for the obtaining thereof. And this Scripture which we are speaking of is such an one. Let the best master of arts on earth show me, if he can, any condition in the text, ‘All that the Father gives me shall come to me,’ that depends upon any qualification in us which is not by the same promise to be wrought in us by the Lord Jesus. An absolute promise, therefore, is, as we say, without if or and; that is, it requires nothing of us that itself may be accomplished. It says not, they shall if they will, but they shall; not, they shall if they use the means, but they shall. You may say that a will, and the use of means is supposed, though not expressed. But I answer, no, by no means, that is, as a condition of this promise. If they [i.e., a will and means] be at all included in the promise, they are included there as the effect of the absolute promise, not as if it is to be expected that the qualification arise from us. ‘Your people shall be willing in the day of your power’ (Psalms 110:3). This is another absolute promise; but does this promise suppose a willingness in us as a condition of God’s making us willing? Does it mean that they shall be willing, if they are willing; or they shall be willing, if they be willing. This is ridiculous; there is nothing of this supposed. The promise is absolute and certain to us; all that it requires for its own accomplishment is the mighty power of Christ and his faithfulness to accomplish.

“The difference, therefore, between the absolute and conditional promises is this: (1) They differ in their terms. The absolute promises say, I will and you shall; the conditional say, I will if you will; or, Do this and you shall live (Jeremiah 31:32; Jeremiah 31:34; Ezekiel 34:24-31; Hebrews 8:7-12; Jeremiah 4:1; Ezekiel 18:30-32; Matthew 19:21). (2) They differ in their way of communicating good things to men. The absolute promises communicate good things freely only of grace; the conditional communicate good things only if there be that qualification in us which the promise calls for, not else. (3) The absolute promises engage God, the others engage us; I mean God only, us only. (4) Absolute promises must be fulfilled; conditional may or may not be fulfilled. The absolute ones must be fulfilled because of the faithfulness of God; the others may not be because of the unfaithfulness of men. (5) The absolute promises have, therefore, a sufficiency in themselves to bring about their own fulfilling; the conditional have not so. The absolute promise is therefore a big-bellied promise, because it has in itself a fullness of all desired things for us and will, when the time of that promise is come, yield to us mortals that which will verily save us, yea, and make us capable of answering the demands of the conditional promise. Wherefore, though there be a real, yea, an eternal difference in these respects and others, between the conditional and the absolute promise, yet again, in other respects, there is a blessed harmony between them, as may be seen in these particulars: (1) The conditional promise calls for repentance, the absolute gives it (Acts 5:30-31). (2) The conditional promise calls for faith, the absolute promise gives it (Zephaniah 3:12; Romans 15:12). (3) The conditional promise calls for a new heart, the absolute promise gives it (Ezekiel 36:1-38). (4) The conditional promise calls for holy obedience, the absolute promise gives it or causes it (Ezekiel 36:27). And as they harmoniously agree in this, so again the conditional promise blesses the man who by the absolute promise is endued with its fruits. As for instance: (1) The absolute promise makes men upright; and then the conditional follows, saying, ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord’ (Psalms 119:1). (2) The absolute promise gives to this man the fear of the Lord; and then the conditional follows, saying, ‘Blessed is everyone that fears the Lord’ (118:1). (3) The absolute promise gives faith; and then the conditional follows, saying, ‘Blessed is he that believes’ (Zephaniah 3:12; Luke 1:45). (4) The absolute promise brings free forgiveness of sins; and then says the conditional, ‘Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is covered’ (Romans 4:7-8). (5) The absolute promise says that God’s elect shall hold out to the end; then the conditional follows with its blessings, ‘He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved’ (Mark 13:13). Thus do the promises gloriously serve one another and us, and this is their harmonious agreement.” In the covenant of saving grace faith is a means or instrument, not a condition. Properly speaking, a condition is something rendered by one party to the other; for example, in the covenant of works perfect obedience was the condition of life, and this was to be supplied by man. But in the covenant of saving grace faith is not supplied by the believer, but is the gift of God; by regeneration the believer is inclined and enabled to believe. Faith, therefore, is not a condition of the covenant of saving grace, but a means of its fulfillment. In the covenant of common grace, on the contrary, faith is a condition; for under this form of grace God demands faith from the sinner and does not give it to him. These remarks apply also to repentance, which in common grace is required of the sinner as something which he is to originate as a condition of salvation, but which in special grace is originated in him by the Holy Spirit, not as a condition to be performed on his part, but as a means or instrument employed by God to accomplish his unconditional promise to the elect: “I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts.”

4.1.11 (see p. 458). Owen (Arminianism, chap. 7) thus speaks of the separation of punishment from culpability: “Sin and punishment, though they are sometimes separated by God’s mercy, pardoning the one and so not inflicting the other, yet never by his justice, inflicting the latter when the former is not. Sin imputed by itself alone, without an inherent guilt, was never punished in any but Christ.” Augustine (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.6) says the same: “But how can the Pelagians say ‘that only death passed upon us by Adam’s means?’ For if we die because he died, but he died because he sinned, they say that the punishment passed without the guilt and that innocent infants are punished with an unjust penalty by deriving death without the desert of death. This the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo death, that is, the penalty of sin, without sin, for us. As he alone became the Son of Man in order that we might through him become sons of God, so he alone, on our behalf, underwent punishment without ill desert, that we through him might obtain grace without good desert. Because as to us nothing good was due, so to him nothing bad was due. Therefore, commending his love to them to whom he was about to give undeserved life, he was willing to suffer for them an undeserved death. This special prerogative of the mediator the Pelagians endeavor to make void, so that this should no longer be special in the Lord, if Adam in such wise suffered a death due to him on account of his guilt as that infants deriving from him no guilt should suffer undeserved death.”

4.1.12 (see p. 458). Augustine gives his view of natural union and of the relation of Adam’s first sin and his subsequent individual transgressions to his posterity in the following extracts:

“Julian then proceeds to ask: ‘Why, then, are they whom God created in the devil’s power? And he finds an answer to his own question apparently from a phrase of mine. ‘Because of sin,’ says he, ‘not because of nature.’ Then framing his answer in reference to mine, he says, ‘But as there cannot be offspring without the sexes, so there cannot be sin without the will.’ Yes, indeed, such is the truth. For even as ‘by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so also has death passed through to all men, for in him all have sinned.’ By the evil will of that one man all sinned in him, since all were that one man from whom, therefore, they individually derived original sin” (Marriage and Concupiscence 2.15). The unity of Adam and his posterity here affirmed by Augustine is natural, not representative. A constituent can derive nothing from his vicarious representative by propagation; but the posterity of Adam, according to Augustine, derive original sin by this method, which infers an original unity of species or nature: “So soon as the infant, who owes his first birth to others acting under the impulse of natural instincts, has been made partaker of the second birth by others acting under the impulse of spiritual desires, he cannot thenceforward be held under the bond of that [individual] sin in another to which he does not with his own will consent. ‘Both the soul of the father is mine,’ says the Lord, ‘and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it shall die.’ That bond of guilt, which was to be canceled by the grace of the sacrament of baptism, he derived from Adam for the reason that at the time of Adam’s sin he was not yet a soul having a separate life, that is, another distinct soul respecting which it could be said, ‘Both the soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine.’ Therefore, now, when a man has a personal, separate existence, being thereby made distinct from his parents, he is not held responsible for that [individual] sin in another which is performed without his consent. In the former case he derived guilt from another, because at the time when the guilt which he derived was incurred he was one with the person from whom he derived it and was in him. But one man does not derive guilt from another, when from the fact that each has a separate life belonging to himself the word may apply equally to both: ‘The soul that sins, it shall die’ ” (Letter 98.1 to Boniface, a.d. 408).

4.1.13 (see p. 462). Repentance for Adam’s sin is conceivable and possible upon the traducian theory of its origin, but not upon the creationist theory. If the posterity were a specific unity with Adam and as such participated in the first transgression, repentance for it by any individual who is a part of that unity is virtually repentance for personal sin, which presents no difficulty. But if they were not a specific unity with him and he committed the first transgression as an individual wholly separate from them and merely as their vicar and representative, then repentance for Adam’s sin by Adam’s posterity would be repentance for vicarious sin, which is impossible.

There is no dispute that the sense of guilt and godly sorrow may accompany the consciousness of innate and inherited depravity in the heart. David gives expression to it in Psalms 51:1-19. He confesses the evil and damnableness of his inborn disposition and imputes to himself responsibility and guilt for this disposition. In so doing he repents of Adam’s sin as his own sin, because as an individual he is a propagated part of that one specific nature which “sinned in Adam and fell with him in his first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism 16). In being conscious of the evil inclination of his will, he is conscious of it as something in the origin of which he was concerned when his individual nature was a part of the common mass in Adam and Eve. This individual nature is a fraction of the specific nature which committed the sin of apostasy from God, which sin is imputable as a whole and with all its guilt, to each and every one of the individual parts, because the guilt of an act of sin cannot be divided and distributed among the several or many individuals who committed it. The fact that the sense of guilt does accompany the sense of inward corruption proves that the individual must have been a sharer in its origin. Otherwise the fact of birth sin and of inherent depravity would go to excuse sin rather than to magnify it. But in the self-consciousness of the regenerate man, it goes to aggravate it. David so represents it. He mentions the fact that he “was shaped in iniquity” and that “in sin did his mother conceive him” in proof not only of the depth of his depravity but of the greatness of its guilt. This is explicable only on the supposition that through his immediate parents was transmitted that self-determined inclination of will and sinful disposition of heart which had its responsible origin not in his own father and mother, but in the first two remote parents from whom he and all other individuals descend and in whom they all sinned specifically.

4.1.14 (see p. 464). Turretin (16.3.15) again marks the difference in the kind of union between Adam and his posterity and Christ and his people: “Nor does it follow that if we are constituted unrighteous and obligated to punishment by the sin propagated from Adam, we ought, therefore, to be justified by the righteousness inherent in us by the regeneration communicated by Christ because the reason (ratio) of each is most diverse. And, moreover, Paul here (Romans 5:18-19) instituted a comparison between the first and second Adam, in respect to the fact [of union], but not in respect to the manner of the fact (in re, non in modo rei).”

4.1.15 (see p. 469). Mill commits the same error as Hodge in supposing that realism means that the individual contains the whole specific nature instead of being merely a severed part of it. “If man,” he says, “was a substance inhering in each individual man, the essence of man (whatever that might mean) was naturally supposed to accompany it; to inhere in John Thompson and Julius Caesar and form the common essence of Thompson and Julius Caesar” (Logic 1.6). When it is said by the creationist himself that the individual man is a part of the human species, it is not meant, of course, that he is a part of a nonentity, of something that has only a nominal and fictitious existence. A part of a nonentity would also be a nonentity; and therefore the denial that the species is a reality is logically the denial that the individual is such. A fraction of a whole can have no reality unless the whole has it. The common definition, therefore, of an individual as a portion of the species implies traducianism, that is, that the species is objectively real, not nominal.

4.1.16 (see p. 470). The following questions and answers may help to explain the difference between nonindividualized human nature and individualized:

1. Can the specific human nature exist outside of individual persons? No; it must exist either as a whole in the first human pair or as subdivided parts in the individuals who are constituted out of it by generation. As an entire nature it was created and existed in and with Adam and Eve. As subsequently subdivided and transmitted in parts by propagation, it exists not as at first solely in Adam and Eve, but also in their individual posterity. Either as a whole or as fractional parts it cannot be conceived of as outside of individual persons. Every transmitted part of the specific nature is transmitted in and by particular individuals.

2. Although the original human nature has been individualized by propagation into innumerable human persons, yet does not each pair, male and female, of these persons contain the whole of the human nature? Suppose the whole race excepting one pair should now be cut off or annihilated, would not the human nature be entire in these two? No; no pair of individuals, excepting the first pair of a species, contains the whole nature. All the individuals of a race can be propagated only from the first two individuals. Should an individual pair be taken at the middle of the series it would be impossible to derive as much population from them as from Adam and Eve. And the reason is that they do not contain the whole specific nature, but only a portion of it. Should ten pairs of individuals be placed upon one island, and only one pair upon another, more population, the circumstances being the same in both islands, would issue from the ten pairs than from the one; but neither from ten nor ten thousand pairs would so many issue as from Adam and Eve.

3. After Cain and Abel were conceived, the specific human nature was in four individuals instead of two; was there any less of the specific nature in Adam and Eve than there was before any children were conceived? Certainly; a part of the nature is now divided from the primitive whole and constitutes a separate offspring. This diminishes the original mass in two ways: (a) by that fraction of the nature which is formed into the individuals Cain and Abel and (b) by that additional fraction of the nature which is taken to be transmitted and propagated by the individuals Cain and Abel. In this way there is a constant diminution of the primitive nonindividualized human nature when once its division and individualization begins by conception. The specific human nature will not yield so many individuals from 1882 to the end of the world as it will have yielded from Adam to the end of the world. Hebrews 7:9-10 is cited in proof of the existence of all mankind in Adam, but it is inadequate except in the way of illustration. The tribe of Levi was only a fraction of mankind. Not the entire race, but a small part of it “paid tithes in Abraham.”

4. The nonindividualized human nature is a combination of both psychical and physical substance. Is the psychical factor contained in the physical, or the physical in the psychical? The meaning of “substance,” as defined on pp. 433-34, 440, 465-67, 474, and 477-78, must be remembered. Both psychical and physical substance are invisibles. One of them, consequently, is not contained in the other. Mental life or substance is not held in animal life or substance as in a local receptacle of it. Both are coordinate but heterogeneous principles; one of them being invisible mind, and the other invisible matter. But as invisibles, both coexisted in the primitive nonindividualized nature in Adam and Eve and continue to coexist in every transmitted fraction of it and produce each its appropriate product: one produces the soul and the other produces the body of the individual person.

5. Why did the entire human nature act in and with the first two individuals, while the transmitted fraction of human nature does not act in and with each of the subsequent millions of individuals? Because in the former instance the entire nature by being created in the first two individuals constitutes a unity with them, but in the latter instance the fractional part being only transmitted, not created, does not constitute a unity with the individual in whom it is. When a specific nature is immediately created in the first pair of individuals, it has had no previous existence and makes an indispensable part of the newly created unity. But when a part of this nature is separated from the primary mass and is transmitted in and with a subsequent individual in order to be individualized by propagation, it has had a prior existence in the first pair of individuals and a unity with them and therefore does not constitute a unity with and a necessary part of the subsequent individual. The individual in this latter case is complete without it because he is not a specific individual. He does not require, like Adam and Eve, in order to the completeness of his personality the unification of the specific nature with his individuality. Hence, when the propagated individuals of the human species sin against God, the fraction of human nature in them does not sin in and with them, because it is not one with them. It has already sinned in the first transgression in and with Adam, with whom it was one and is corrupt human nature, but it will not act out its own sinfulness until it is individualized by propagation and becomes a distinct and separate person by itself. In brief, the total human nature sinned in Adam and Eve because it was a unity with them; but does not sin in their posterity because it is not a unity with them. Only of Adam and Eve can it be said with St. Paul: “In Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22) and “in whom all sinned” (Romans 5:12); and with Augustine: “We all were that one man.”¹⁴⁹[Note: 49 149. omnes eramus unus ille homo]

Augustine asserts the objectivity of human nature as substance or entity as follows: “Man’s nature was created at first innocent and without any sin; but that nature of man in which everyone is born from Adam now needs the physician because it is not sound. All good qualities, doubtless, which it still possesses in its make and constitution, namely, life, senses, and intellect, it has from the most high God, its Creator. But the flaw which darkens and weakens all those natural excellences so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator, but from that original sin which it committed by free will. Accordingly, guilty nature has its part in most righteous punishment. For if we are now newly created in Christ we were for all that ‘children of wrath even as others.’ The entire mass, therefore, incurs penalty; and if the deserved punishment of condemnation were rendered to all, it would without doubt be righteously rendered” (Nature and Grace 3.5). The nature is here described as having objective and real existence: “it” was created innocent; “it” needs the healing of the physician; “it” still possesses life, senses, intellect, will, and other constitutional qualities; “it” committed original sin by free will. The “entire mass” incurred penalty and deserves punishment: “Because Adam forsook God of his own free will he experienced the just judgment of God that with his whole race, which being as yet all placed in him had sinned with him, he should be condemned. Hence, even if none should be delivered no one could justly blame the judgment of God” (Rebuke and Grace 28).

4.1.17 (see p. 473). Pearson (On the Creed, art. 2) thus explains the difference between eternal and temporal generation: “In human generation the son is begotten in the same nature with the father, which is performed by derivation or decision of part of the substance of the parent; but this decision includes imperfection, because it supposes a substance divisible and consequently corporeal; whereas, the essence of God is incorporeal, spiritual, and indivisible, and therefore his nature is really communicated, not by derivation or decision, but by a total and plenary communication. The divine essence being by reason of its simplicity not subject to division and in respect to its infinity incapable of multiplication is so communicated as not to be multiplied; insomuch that he which proceeds by that communication has not only the same nature, but is also the same God. The Father God and the Word God; Abraham man and Isaac man; but Abraham one man, Isaac another man; not so the Father one God, and the Word another, but the Father and the Word both the same God.” Pearson, from his creationist position, understands by “human nature” only physical human nature and does not distinguish with the traducianist between physical and psychical division. By division he means human division of ponderable substance, which, as he says, would imply that the substance is corporeal.

4.1.18 (see p. 476). The omission of the justification of Christ’s human nature, while the sanctification of it is asserted, is seen in Owen’s account of the subject in his “Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (2.1). “Christ,” he says, “was never federally in Adam and so not liable to the imputation of Adam’s first sin. It is true that sin was imputed to him when he was made sin; thereby he took away the sin of the world. But it was imputed to him in the covenant of the mediator, through his voluntary susception; and not in the covenant of Adam by a legal imputation. Had it been reckoned to him as a descendant from Adam, he had not been a fit high priest to have offered sacrifices for us, as not being ‘separate from sinners’ (Hebrews 7:25). Christ was in Adam in a natural sense from his first creation, in respect of the purpose of God (Luke 3:23; Luke 3:38), yet he was not in him in a law sense until after the fall; so that as to his own person he had no more to do with the first sin of Adam than with any personal sin of one whose punishment he voluntarily took upon him. As for the pollution of our nature, it was prevented in him from the instant of conception (1:35). He was ‘made of a woman,’ but that portion whereof he was made was sanctified by the Holy Spirit, so that what was born thereof should be a holy thing.” The objections to this view of the subject, which is common among Calvinistic creationists, are the following. (1) It separates the guilt of sin from the pollution and separates justification from sanctification, both of which from their nature are inseparable. If, as Owen concedes that “portion” of human nature which was derived from the virgin was “sanctified by the Holy Spirit” from the pollution of sin, it necessarily had also the guilt of sin which required to be expiated in order to the perfect preparation of the nature for union with the Logos. Neither Scripture nor reason know of a sin that is without guilt. Whenever sanctification is required, justification is also. (2) It destroys the unity between that portion of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with that remainder which was not so assumed; in other words, between Christ’s humanity and that of his people whom he redeemed. The guilt of the first sin was upon the latter, but not upon the former, according to this view. But the Scriptures describe Christ’s human nature, in its original condition and before it was miraculously prepared for the union with the Logos, as being like that of fallen man in every respect. It was created holy in Adam, put upon probation in him, was tempted in him, fell in him, and came under guilt and condemnation in him, because it was the “seed of Adam,” the “seed of the woman,” and “sinful flesh” in the same way as was the human nature of David, Abraham, and Adam, whose son Christ is said to be (3:31, 34, 38). But if, as Owen says, Christ was in Adam “in a natural sense,” but not “in a law sense,” this could not have been the case, because it is only the law that condemns and charges guilt. St. Paul (Galatians 4:4) expressly asserts not only that Christ was “made of a woman,” but was “made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” The implication is that he was “under the law” in the same sense that those whom he redeemed were and sustained the same relation to it in all respects. (3) This view makes the redemption of the “portion” of human nature which the Logos assumed to be different from the redemption of his people. But Scripture describes it as the same. Christhumanity was the firstfruits of redemption: “Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Christ’s people are redeemed from both the guilt and pollution of Adam’s sin; but, according to the view we are criticizing, Christ’s humanity was redeemed only from the pollution of it.

Instead, therefore, of making Christ’s human nature in its original state in the virgin, as derived from Adam and previous to its miraculous preparation in her for the hypostatic union, to be different from the fallen human nature of Adam and his posterity generally by not being under condemnation but only polluted and as requiring sanctification but not justification, it agrees better with Scripture to make it precisely the same in every respect and then to have it completely justified from guilt and sanctified from pollution. Christ’s human nature before the incarnation was thus a fractional part of the common fallen human nature, having the same common characteristics with it. As it was in the virgin mother, it was “sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). But when it was no longer in the virgin mother, but was in the God-man, having been made by the miraculous conception the human nature of the incarnate Word, it was no longer “sinful flesh,” but that “holy thing” which Luke (1:35) speaks of and which is described in Hebrews 7:26 as “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” The difference between Christ’s human nature as it was originally in the virgin mother and as it subsequently was in him is marked by St. Paul in Romans 8:3 : “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin [Revised Version: as an offering for sin] condemned sin in the flesh.” He does not say that Christ “condemned sin in the sinful flesh.” The epithet sinful in the first clause describes the human nature prior to its assumption; and the omission of the epithet in the second clause describes it subsequently to this. “Sinful flesh” could not be an offering for sin. This method of explanation makes the human nature of Christ after its preparation for assumption by the Logos to be as guiltless of Adam’s sin as Owen’s explanation does. As the justification of an individual sinner sets him as completely free from guilt and condemnation as if he had never been a sinner at all, so the justification of that “portion” of fallen human nature which the Logos assumed made it as free from the guilt and condemnation of Adam’s sin as if it had not fallen and come under condemnation in Adam. And it avoids the serious defect in Owen’s explanation of separating the pollution from the guilt of Adam’s sin and of making the human nature of Christ as it existed in the virgin mother to be different from that of Adam and his posterity generally, thereby conflicting with Scripture, which represents Christ as “not taking the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham” and as being “made like unto his brethren in all things” (Hebrews 2:16-17). In 13.5.19 Turretin gives a similar explanation of the human nature of Christ: “Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6), that is, if born according to the order of nature and in a natural manner, by ordinary generation; but not if born beyond such order and in a supernatural manner, as was the case with Christ. Hence, although Christ derived origin from sinful Adam, he did not nevertheless derive sin from him, either imputed or inherent, because he did not descend from him by the force of the general promise ‘increase and multiply,’ but by virtue of the special promise concerning ‘the seed of the woman.’ And although he was in Adam in respect to nature, he was not in respect to person and moral state or federal relationship, by which it happens that all the posterity of Adam, Christ excepted, participate in his sin.” The objection to this explanation is this: Christ’s “nature” cannot be separated in this manner from his “person,” so that what is predicable of the former is not of the latter; so that the “nature” might have been in Adam, but not the “person.” The “person” of an individual man is constituted out of the specific “nature” of man and is a fractional part of it; consequently, if the whole was in Adam the part was also; and the very same properties and qualities belong to both. If the “nature” is rational, immortal, and voluntary, the “person” will be also. If the “nature” is holy or sinful, the “person” will be so likewise. Both the intrinsic and the acquired properties will be alike. The only difference between the “nature” and the “person” is in the form, not in the substance with its properties and qualities. The “person” of Christ, being a part of the common human nature that was created in Adam and which sinned with him in the first transgression, must have had all the properties and qualities of fallen human nature. Both the guilt and the pollution of the first sin attached to it. And therefore, in order to be prepared and fit for union with the divine nature of the second trinitarian person, both the guilt and the pollution must be completely and perfectly removed.

If the Logos redeemed the human nature which he assumed and in order to assume it, it is evident that the nature was justified as well as sanctified. Besides the citations on pp. 475-76 in proof that this was the understanding of Scripture by the church, the following from the Formula of Concord 1 is explicit: “This same human nature of ours (to wit, his own work or creation) Christ has redeemed, the same (his own work) he sanctifies, the same he raises from the dead, and with great glory adorns it (to wit, his own work)” (see p. 634).

4.1.19 (see p. 477). Owen (Person of Christ 12.247-49 [ed. Russell]) teaches the divisibility of the common specific nature of man in his explication of the human nature of Christ: “The Scripture abounds in the declaration of the necessity that the satisfaction for sin be made in the nature itself that sinned and is to be saved. ‘Christ took not on him the nature of angels. Inasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.’ The same nature that sinned must work out the reparation and recovery from sin. That part of human nature wherein or whereby this work was to be effected, as unto the essence or substance of it, was to be derived from the common root or stock of the same nature in our first parents. It would not suffice hereunto that God should create a man out of the dust of the earth or out of nothing, of the same nature in general with ourselves. For there would be no cognation or alliance between him and us, so that we should be in any way concerned in what he did and suffered. For this alliance depends solely hereon, ‘that God has of one blood made all nations of men’ (Acts 17:26). Hence it is that the genealogy of Christ is given us in the gospel not only from Abraham, to declare the faithfulness of God in the promise that he should be of his seed, but from Adam also, to manifest his relation unto the common stock of our nature and unto all mankind therein.

“This [part of] human nature, wherein the work of our recovery and salvation is to be wrought out, was not to be so derived from the original stock of our kind or race as to bring along with it the same taint of sin and the same liableness unto guilt upon its own account, as accompany every other individual person in the world. For if this [part of human] nature in him were so defiled as the [part of human] nature is in us before our renovation, it could make no satisfaction for the sin of others.

“To take a little further view hereof, we must consider on what grounds spiritual defilement and guilt do adhere unto our nature, as they are in all our individual persons. And the first of these is that our entire [specific] nature, as unto our participation of it was in Adam as our head and representative. Hence his sin became the sin of us all and is justly imputed unto us and charged on us. ‘In him we all sinned’; all did so who were in him as their common representative when he sinned. Hereby we became the natural ‘children of wrath’ or liable unto the wrath of God, for the common sin of our nature in the natural and legal head or spring of it. And the second ground is that we derive our [individual part of human] nature from Adam by the way of natural generation. By that means alone is the nature of our first parents as defiled communicated unto us. For by this means do we come to appertain unto the stock as it was degenerate and corrupt. Wherefore that part of our nature [in the person of Christ] wherein and whereby this great work of salvation was to be wrought must, as unto its essence and substance, be derived from our first parents, yet so as never to have been in Adam as a common representative nor be derived from him by natural generation. This, as we know, was done in the person of Christ; for his human nature was never in Adam as his representative nor was he comprised in the [legal] covenant whereon Adam stood. For Christ derived it [his human nature] legally only from and after the first promise when Adam ceased to be a public person. Nor did it proceed from him [Adam] by natural generation, the only means of the derivation of its depravation and pollution. For it was a ‘holy thing’ created in the womb of the virgin by the power of the Most High.” (Owen here uses the term created not in its strict sense of creation ex nihilo, but of quickening, making alive. He refers to the agency of the Holy Spirit in the conception of the “seed of the woman” and expressly says that “it would not suffice in the incarnation that God should create a man out of nothing, for there would be no alliance between the God-man and ourselves.”) In this statement Owen combines traducianism and creationism, natural and representative union, and introduces the following difficulties: (1) This “part” of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with himself was surely in Adam along with all the other parts of the common nature when “all sinned.” How could it have been in him and not have been “represented” by him? (2) How could it have been a part of the common human nature and “not be comprised in the legal covenant” which God made with this human nature as it was in Adam? (3) In exempting that “part” of human nature assumed into union by the Logos, as it existed in Adam and the virgin and prior to its preparation for this union by the miraculous conception of the Holy Spirit, from “representation” by Adam and participation in the legal covenant, Owen is in conflict with what he says respecting the necessity that Christ’s human nature be like that of the race whom he came to save. His individual human nature, being a part of the specific human nature, was “sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3) because it “sinned in Adam and fell with him in the first transgression.” But in order to this sinning and fall it must not only have been “made of a woman,” but “made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law” (Galatians 4:4) and have been “represented” by Adam, if representation and not natural union be the truth. And because this portion of human nature was in the same fallen and sinful condition with the remainder, it could not be assumed into union as it was, but the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit was necessary to fit it for its union with the second person of the Trinity. As Owen himself says (Meditations on the Glory of Christ, preface), “In this condition, lost, poor, base, yea, cursed, the Lord Christ, the Son of God, found our nature. And hereon, in infinite condescension and compassion, sanctifying a portion of it unto himself, he took it to be his own in a holy, ineffable subsistence, in his own person.” In the following passage Owen teaches that the relation of Christ’s individual human nature to the specific human nature is like that of any other individual human nature to the specific nature: “The eternal person of the Son of God or the divine nature in the person of the Son did, by an ineffable act of his divine power and love, assume our nature into an individual subsistence in or with himself, that is, to be his own nature, even as the divine nature is his. This is the infallible foundation of faith, even to them who can comprehend very little of these divine mysteries. They can and do believe that the Son of God did take our nature to be his own; so that whatever was done therein was done by him as it is with every other man. Every man has human nature appropriated unto himself by an individual subsistence, whereby he becomes to be that man which he is and not another; or that nature which is common unto all becomes in him [by division and separation of a part] to be peculiarly his own, as if there were none partaker of it but himself. Adam, in his first creation, when all human nature was in him alone, was no more [merely] that individual man which he was, than every man is now the man that he is [merely] by his individual subsistence. [That is to say: Adam was an individual and also specific as including the whole nature. Each of his posterity is also an individual and also specific, as partaking of, but not including, the whole nature.] So the Lord Christ taking [a part of] that nature which is common unto all into a peculiar subsistence in his own person, it becomes his, and he the man Christ Jesus. This was the [human] mind that was in him. By reason of his assumption of our nature, with his doing and suffering therein, whereby he was found in fashion as a man, the glory of his divine person was veiled, and he made himself of no reputation. It is also to be observed that in the assumption of our nature to be his own nature he did not change it into a thing divine, but preserved it entire in all its essential properties and actings. Hence it really died and suffered, was tried, tempted, and forsaken, as the same nature in any other man might do and be. That nature as it was peculiarly his, and therefore he or his person therein, was exposed unto all the temporary evils which the same nature is subject unto in any other person” (Glory of Christ in Works 12.419).

4.1.20 (see p. 481). Is the moral agency of the human race in Adam and Eve possible and conceivable? Can a specific human nature, which is subsequently to be transformed by propagation into millions of individuals, act voluntarily and responsibly “in and with” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22) the first two individuals in whom it was created? Can human nature self-determine to sin, first as a unity and a whole and then afterward continue this self-determination in every one of the million parts into which it is subdivided by propagation into separate individuals? It can if the constituent properties are the same in both instances. If the nature as a whole is identical in kind, that is, has the same essential properties of spirituality, rationality, voluntariness, and immortality with its individual parts, what the latter can do the former can. In this case if the individual man can sin the specific man can. There is no dispute that the fractional part of human nature which makes the substance of an individual person of the human species is a spiritual, rational, voluntary, and immortal substance and is capable of rational and voluntary agency by reason of these properties; there ought, therefore, to be no denial that the entire human nature as a unity and prior to its individualization by propagation is capable of the same kind of agency because it has the very same qualities. The power of any substance or nature depends upon the kind of properties belonging to it.