in Adam we are made sinners by the imputation of his sin. . . . . Guilt is liability or exposedness to punishment; it does not in theological usage imply moral turpitude or criminality." 162-Turretin is quoted: "The foundation, therefore, of imputation is not merely the natural connection which exists between us and Adam - for, were this the case, all his sins would be imputed to us, but principally the moral and federal, on the ground of which God entered into covenant with him as our head. Hence in that sin Adam acted not as a private but a public person and representative." The oneness results from contract; the natural union is frequently not mentioned at all. Marck: All men sinned in Adam, “eos representante." The acts of Adam and of Christ are ours "jure representationis."

G. W. Northrup makes the order of the Federal theory to be: "(1) imputation of Adam's guilt; (2) condemnation on the ground of this imputed guilt; (3) corruption of nature consequent upon treatment as condemned. So judicial imputation of Adam's sin is the cause and ground of innate corruption. . . . . All the acts, with the single exception of the sin of Adam, are divine acts: the appointment of Adam, the creation of his descendants, the imputation of his guilt, the condemnation of his posterity, their consequent corruption. Here we have guilt without sin, exposure to divine wrath without ill-desert, God regarding men as being what they are not, punishing them on the ground of a sin committed before they existed, and visiting them with gratuitous condemnation and gratuitous reprobation. Here are arbitrary representation, fictitious imputation, constructive guilt, limited atonement." The Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882: 30, claims that Kloppenburg (1642) preceded Cocceius ( 1648) in holding to the theory of the Covenants, as did also the Canons of Dort. For additional statements of Federalism, see Hodge, Essays, 49-86, and Syst. Theol., 2: 192-204; Bib. Sac., 21: 95-107; Cunningham, Historical Theology.

To the Federal theory we object :

A. It is extra-Scriptural, there being no mention of such a covenant with Adam in the account of man's trial. The assumed allusion to Adam's apostasy in Hosea 6 : 7, where the word "covenant" is used, is too precarious and too obviously metaphorical to afford the basis for a scheme of imputation (see Henderson, Com. on Minor Prophets, in loco). In Heb. 8:8-"new covenant"- there is suggested a contrast, not with an Adamic, but with the Mosaic, covenant (cf. verse 9).

In Hosea 6:7-"they like Adam [ marg. 'men'] have trangressed the covenant" (Rev. Ver.) — the correct translation is given by Henderson, Minor Prophets: "But they, like men that break a covchant, there they proved false to me.” LXX; αὐτοὶ δέ εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος παραβαίνων διαθήκην. De Wette: "Aber sie übertreten den Bund nach Menschenart; daselbst sind sie mir treulos." Here the word adam, translated "man," either means "a man," or "man," i. e., generic man. "Israel had as little regard to their covenants with God as men of unprincipled character have for ordinary contracts." "Like a man "" -as men do. Compare Ps. 82:7-"ye shall die like men"; Hosea 8 : 1, 2-"they have transgressed my covenant"-an allusion to the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenant. Heb. 8:9-"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt."

B. It contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam's sin to be God's regarding and treating the race as sinners. The Scripture, on the contrary, declares that Adam's offense constituted us sinners (Rom. 5: 19). We are not sinners simply because God regards and treats us as such, but God regards us as sinners because we are sinners. Death is said to have "passed unto all men," not because all were regarded and treated as sinners, but "because all sinned" (Rom. 5 : 12).

For a full exegesis of the passage Rom. 5: 12-19, see note to the discussion of the Theory of Adam's Natural Headship, pages 625–627. Dr. Park gave great offence by saying that the so-called "covenants" of law and of grace, referred in the Westminster Confession as made by God with Adam and Christ respectively, were really" made in Holland." The word fœdus, in such a connection, could properly mean nothing more than “ordi

nance"; see Vergil, Georgics, 1: 60-63-"eterna fœdera." E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 185-"God's 'covenant' with men is simply his method of dealing with them according to their knowledge and opportunities."

C. It impugns the justice of God by implying:

(a) That God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant which they had no part in establishing. The assumed covenant is only a sovereign decree; the assumed justice, only arbitrary will.

We not only never authorized Adam to make such a covenant, but there is no evidence that he ever made one at all. It is not even certain that Adam knew he should have posterity. In the case of the imputation of our sins to Christ, Christ covenanted voluntarily to bear them, and joined himself to our nature that he might bear them. In the case of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, we first become one with Christ, and upon the ground of our union with him are justified. But upon the Federal theory, we are condemned upon the ground of a covenant which we neither instituted, nor participated in, nor assented to.

(b) That upon the basis of this covenant God accounts men as sinners who are not sinners. But God judges according to truth. His condemnations do not proceed upon a basis of legal fiction. He can regard as responsible for Adam's transgression only those who in some real sense have been concerned, and have had part, in that transgression.

See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 544-" Here is a sin, which is no crime, but a mere condition of being regarded and treated as sinners; and a guilt, which is devoid of sinfulness, and which does not imply moral demerit or turpitude,”- that is, a sin which is no sin, and a guilt which is no guilt. Why might not God as justly reckon Adam's sin to the account of the fallen angels, and punish them for it? Dorner, System Doct., 2:351; 3:53, 54-"Hollaz held that God treats men in accordance with what he foresaw all would do, if they were in Adam's place" (scientia media and imputatio metaphysica). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 141-"Immediate imputation is as unjust as imputatio metaphysica, i. e., God's condemning us for what he knew we would have done in Adam's place. On such a theory there is no need of a trial at all. God might condemn half the race at once to hell without probation, on the ground that they would ultimately sin and come thither at any rate." Justification can be gratuitous, but not condemnation. "Like the social-compact theory of government, the covenant-theory of sin is a mere legal fiction. It explains, only to belittle. The theory of New England theology, which attributes to mere sovereignty God's making us sinners in consequence of Adam's sin, is more reasonable than the Federal theory" (Fisher).

Professor Moses Stuart characterized this theory as one of “fictitious guilt, but veritable damnation." The divine economy admits of no fictitious substitutions nor forensic evasions. No legal quibbles can modify eternal justice. Federalism reverses the proper order, and puts the effect before the cause, as is the case with the social-compact theory of government. Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 27-"It is illogical to say that society originated in a contract; for contract presupposes society." Unus homo, nullus homo = without society, no persons. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 351"No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him. . . . 200-Only through society is personality actualized." Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 209, note-"Organic interrelationship of individuals is the condition even of their relatively independent selfhood." We are "members one of another" (Rom 12:15). Schurman, Agnosticism, 176-"The individual could never have developed into a personality but for his training through society and under law." Imagine a theory that the family originated in a compact! We must not define the state by its first crude beginnings, any more than we define the oak by the acorn. On the theory of a social-compact, see Lowell, Essays on Government, 136–188.

(c) That, after accounting men to be sinners who are not sinners, God makes them sinners by immediately creating each human soul with a corrupt nature such as will correspond to his decree. This is not only to assume a false view of the origin of the soul, but also to make God directly

the author of sin. Imputation of sin cannot precede and account for corruption; on the contrary, corruption must precede and account for imputation.

By God's act we became depraved, as a penal consequence of Adam's act imputed to us solely as peccatum alienum. Dabney, Theology, 342, says the theory regards the soul as originally pure until imputation. See Hodge on Rom. 5:13; Syst. Theol., 2: 203, 210; Thornwell, Theology, 1: 346-349; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:485, 487. The Federal theory "makes sin in us to be the penalty of another's sin, instead of being the penalty of our own sin, as on the Augustinian scheme, which regards depravity in us as the punishment of our own sin in Adam. . . . It holds to a sin which does not bring eternal punishment, but for which we are legally responsible as truly as Adam." It only remains to say that Dr. Hodge always persistently refused to admit the one added element which might have made his view less arbitrary and mechanical, namely, the traducian theory of the origin of the soul. He was a creatianist, and to the end maintained that God immediately created the soul, and created it depraved. Acceptance of the traducian theory would have compelled him to exchange his Federalism for Augustinianism. Creatianism was the one remaining element of Pelagian atomism in an otherwise Scriptural theory. Yet Dr. Hodge regarded this as an essential part of Biblical teaching. His unwavering confidence was like that of Fichte, whom Caroline Schelling represented as saying: "Zweifle an der Sonne Klarheit, Zweifle an der Sterne Licht, Leser, nur an meiner Wahrheit Und an deiner Dummheit, nicht."

As a corrective to the atomistic spirit of Federalism we may quote a view which seems to us far more tenable, though it perhaps goes to the opposite extreme. Dr. H. H. Bawden writes: "The self is the product of a social environment. An ascetic self is so far forth not a self. Selfhood and consciousness are essentially social. We are members one of another. The biological view of selfhood regards it as a function, activity, process, inseparable from the social matrix out of which it has arisen. Consciousness is simply the name for the functioning of an organism. Not that the soul is a secretion of the brain, as bile is a secretion of the liver; not that the mind is a function of the body in any such materialistic sense. But that mind or consciousness is only the growing of an organism, while, on the other hand, the organism is just that which grows. The psychical is not a second, subtle, parallel form of energy causally interactive with the physical; much less is it a concomitant series, as the parallelists hold. Consciousness is not an order of existence or a thing, but rather a function. It is the organization of reality, the universe coming to a focus, flowering, so to speak, in a finite centre. Society is an organism in the same sense as the human body. The separation of the units of society is no greater than the separation of the unit factors of the body, in the microscope the molecules are far apart. Society is a great sphere with many smaller spheres within it.

...

"Each self is not impervious to other selves. Selves are not water-tight compartments, each one of which might remain complete in itself, even if all the others were destroyed. But there are open sluiceways between all the compartments. Society is a vast plexus of interweaving personalities. We are members one of another. What affects my neighbor affects me, and what affects me ultimately affects my neighbor. The individual is not an impenetrable atomic unit. . . . The self is simply the social whole coming to consciousness at some particular point. Every self is rooted in the social organism of which it is but a local and individual expression. A self is a mere cipher apart from its social relations. As the old Greek adage has it: 'He who lives quite alone is either a beast or a god.'" While we regard this exposition of Dr. Bawden as throwing light upon the origin of consciousness and so helping our contention against the Federal theory of sin, we do not regard it as proving that consciousness, once developed, may not become relatively independent and immortal. Back of society, as well as back of the individual, lies the consciousness and will of God, in whom alone is the guarantee of persistence. For objections to the Federal theory, see Fisher, Discussions, 401 sq.; Bib. Sac., 20: 455-462, 577; New Englander, 1868: 551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.

5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.

This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606–1655), professor of

Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam's sin was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was condemned by the Synod of the French Reformed Church at Charenton in 1644, he published the view which now bears his name.

According to this view, all men are born physically and morally depraved; this native depravity is the source of all actual sin, and is itself sin; in strictness of speech, it is this native depravity, and this only, which God imputes to men. So far as man's physical nature is concerned, this inborn sinfulness has descended by natural laws of propagation from Adam to all his posterity. The soul is immediately created by God, but it becomes actively corrupt so soon as it is united to the body. Inborn sinfulness is the consequence, though not the penalty, of Adam's transgression.

There is a sense, therefore, in which Adam's sin may be said to be imputed to his descendants,—it is imputed, not immediately, as if they had been in Adam or were so represented in him that it could be charged directly to them, corruption not intervening,- but it is imputed mediately, through and on account of the intervening corruption which resulted from Adam's sin. As on the Federal theory imputation in the cause of depravity, so on this theory depravity is the cause of imputation. In Rom. 5: 12, "death passed unto all men, for that all sinned," signifies: "death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed upon all men, because all sinned by possessing a depraved nature."

See Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera, 1 : 709-"The sensitive soul is produced from the parent; the intellectual or rational soul is directly created. The soul, on entering the corrupted physical nature, is not passively corrupted, but becomes corrupt actively, accommodating itself to the other part of human nature in character." 710-So this soul" contracts from the vitiosity of the dispositions of the body a corresponding vitiosity, not so much by the action of the body upon the soul, as by that essential appetite of the soul by which it unites itself to the body in a way accommodated to the dispositions of the body, as liquid put into a bowl accommodates itself to the figure of a bowl-sicut vinum in vase acetoso. God was therefore neither the author of Adam's fall, nor of the propagation of sin."

Herzog, Encyclopædie, art.: Placeus-"In the title of his works we read 'Placæus'; he himself, however, wrote 'Placeus,' which is the more correct Latin form [of the French de la Place']. In Adam's first sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning and the first habitual sin (corrupted disposition). The former was transient; the latter clung to his person, and was propagated to all. It is truly sin, and it is imputed to all, since it makes all condemnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted disposition, but not in the imputation of the first act of Adam, except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited depravity." Fisher, Discussions, 389"Mere native corruption is the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term 'imputation' by Rom. 2: 26-If therefore the uncircumcision keep the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned [ imputed ] for circumcision?' Our own depravity is the necessary condition of the imputation of Adam's sin, just as our own faith is the necessary condition of the imputation of Christ's righteousness."

Advocates of Mediate Imputation are, in Great Britain, G. Payne, in his book entitled: Original Sin; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196–232; and James S. Candlish, Biblical Doctrine of Sin, 111-122; in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of Christian Doctrine, 169, 284, 285, 314-323; and E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology. The editor of Dr. Smith's work says: "On the whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a note which reads thus: Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation is wholly satisfactory.' Understand by 'Mediate Imputation' a full statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it; understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation of the facts, and it was 'not wholly satisfactory.'" Dr. Smith himself says, 318-“ Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral conditions of human nature as from Adam - generic: and it is not a doctrine respecting personal

liabilities and desert. For the latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking, it is not sin, which is ill-deserving, but only the sinner. The ultimate distinction is here: There is a well-grounded difference to be made between personal desert, strictly personal character and liabilities (of each individual under the divine law, as applied specifically, e. g., in the last adjudication), and a generic moral condition-the antecedent ground of such personal character.

"The distinction, however, is not between what has moral quality and what has not, but between the moral state of each as a member of the race, and his personal liabilities and desert as an individual. This original sin would wear to us only the character of evil, and not of sinfulness, were it not for the fact that we feel guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a sense of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover, redemption is also necessary to remove it, which shows that it is a moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two extreme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin consists in sinning. The guilt of Adam's sin is-this exposure, this liability on account of such native corruption, our having the same nature in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam's sin is not to be separated from the existence of this evil disposition. And this guilt is what is imputed to us." See art. on H. B. Smith, in Presb. Rev., 1881: "He did not fully acquiesce in Placeus's view, which makes the corrupt nature by descent the only ground of imputation."

The theory of Mediate Imputation is exposed to the following objections: A. It gives no explanation of man's responsibility for his inborn depravity. No explanation of this is possible, which does not regard man's depravity as having had its origin in a free personal act, either of the individual, or of collective human nature in its first father and head. But this participation of all men in Adam's sin the theory expressly denies. The theory holds that we are responsible for the effect, but not for the cause—“ "post Adamum, non propter Adamum." But, says Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2: 209, 331"If this sinful tendency be in us solely through the act of others, and not through our own deed, they, and not we, are responsible for it, it is not our guilt, but our misfortune. And even as to actual sins which spring from this inherent sinful tendency, these are not strictly our own, but the acts of our first parents through us. Why impute them to us as actual sins, for which we are to be condemned? Thus, if we deny the existence of guilt, we destroy the reality of sin, and vice versa." Thornwell, Theology, 1: 348, 349-This theory "does not explain the sense of guilt, as connected with depravity of nature,- how the feeling of ill-desert can arise in relation to a state of mind of which we have been only passive recipients. The child does not reproach himself for the afflictions which a father's follies have brought upon him. But our inward corruption we do feel to be our own fault, it is our crime as well as our shame.”

B. Since the origination of this corrupt nature cannot be charged to the account of man, man's inheritance of it must be regarded in the light of an arbitrary divine infliction—a conclusion which reflects upon the justice of God. Man is not only condemned for a sinfulness of which God is the author, but is condemned without any real probation, either individual or collective.

Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate Imputation, because: "1. It casts so faint a light on the justice of God in the imputation of Adam's sin to adults who do as he did. 2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding." It is unjust to hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the

cause.

C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the sin