I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
I. Theories of Imputation.1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.
Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Rome, 409. They were condemned by the Council of Carthage, 418. Pelagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.
According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.
Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam,—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies:“all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example.”
Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.
Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even if he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born infants are in the same condition as Adam before the Fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal life; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit sin.
In Pelagius' Com. onRom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xi, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Aristides, Numa. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin.“Non pleni nascimur”: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than he; since they have fulfilled many commands, while he did not fulfil so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins,—all these things Pelagius regards as indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system; he ought to have seen in them evidences of a divine influence opposing man's bent to evil and leading him to repentance.[pg 598]Grace, on the Pelagian theory, is simply the grace ofcreation—God's originally endowing man with his high powers of reason and will. While Augustinianism regards human nature asdead, and Semi-Pelagianism regards it assick, Pelagianism proper declares it to bewell.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2:338)—“Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the inward operation of God, have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything.”Ib., 1:626 (Syst. Doct., 2:188, 189)—“Pelagianism at one time counts it too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows its desire to be rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; it really degrades him, by ignoring his true dignity and destiny.”SeeIb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2:43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2:338, 339); 2:148 (Syst. Doct., 3:44). Also Schaff, Church History, 2:783-856; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Wörter, Pelagianismus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.
Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:
A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.
As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”
As slavery was“the sum of all villainy,”so the Pelagian doctrine may be called the sum of all false doctrine. Pelagianism is a survival of paganism, in its majestic egoism and self-complacency.“Cicero, in his Natura Deorum, says that men thank the gods for external advantages, but no man ever thanks the gods for his virtues—that he is honest or pure or merciful. Pelagius was first roused to opposition by hearing a bishop in the public services of the church quote Augustine's prayer:‘Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis’—‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’From this he was led to formulate the gospel according to St. Cicero, so perfectly does the Pelagian doctrine reproduce the Pagan teaching.”The impulse of the Christian, on the other hand, is to refer all gifts and graces to a divine source in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”;John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”;1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”H. Auber:“And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his alone.”
Augustine had said that“Man is most free when controlled by God alone”—“[Deo] solo dominante, liberrimus”(De Mor. Eccl., xxi). Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“In Christ humanity is perfect, because in him it retains no part of that false independence which, in all its manifold forms, is the secret of sin.”Pelagianism, on the contrary, is man's declaration of independence. Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 5:200—“The essence of Pelagianism, the key to its whole mode of thought, lies in this proposition of Julian:‘Homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a Deo’—man, created free, is in his whole being independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God reënters man's life only at the end, at the judgment,—a doctrine of the orphanage of humanity.”
B. It contradicts Scripture in denying: (a) that evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin; (b) that such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind; (c) that men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness; (d) that no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law; (e) that all men, without[pg 599]exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace; (f) that man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death, is the direct effect of Adam's transgression.
The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”
The Westminster Confession, ch. vi. § 4, declares that“we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.”To Pelagius, on the contrary, sin is a mere incident. He knows only ofsins, not ofsin. He holds the atomic, or atomistic, theory of sin, which regards it as consisting in isolated volitions. Pelegianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account forcharacterat all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a self-propagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—“that which comes of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty”(Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.
Amiel says that the great defect of liberal Christianity is its superficial conception of sin. The tendency dates far back: Tertullian spoke of the soul as naturally Christian—“anima naturaliter Christiana.”The tendency has come down to modern times: Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 246—“It is only when children grow up, and begin to absorb their environment, that they lose their artless loveliness.”A Rochester Unitarian preacher publicly declared it to be as much a duty to believe in the natural purity of man, as to believe in the natural purity of God. Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks of“the shadow which the Manichæan theology of Augustine, borrowed by Calvin, cast upon all children, in declaring them born to an inheritance of wrath as a viper's brood.”Dr. Abbott forgets that Augustine was the greatest opponent of Manichæanism, and that his doctrine of inherited guilt may be supplemented by a doctrine of inherited divine influences tending to salvation.
Prof. G. A. Coe tells us that“all children are within the household of God”; that“they are already members of his kingdom”; that“the adolescent change”is“a step notintothe Christian life, butwithinthe Christian life.”We are taught that salvation is by education. But education is only a way of presenting truth. It still remains needful that the soul should accept the truth. Pelagianism ignores or denies the presence in every child of a congenital selfishness which hinders acceptance of the truth, and which, without the working of the divine Spirit, will absolutely counteract the influence of the truth. Augustine was taught his guilt and helplessness by transgression, while Pelagius remained ignorant of the evil of his own heart. Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”
Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy“resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinianism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new.... Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian.”See this Compendium, page 89.
Allen, Religious Progress, 98-100—“Most of the mischief of religious controversy springs from the desire and determination to impute to one's opponent positions which he does not hold, or to draw inferences from his principles, insisting that he shall be held responsible for them, even though he declares that he does not teach them. We say that he ought to accept them; that he is bound logically to do so; that they are necessary deductions from his system; that the tendency of his teaching is in these[pg 600]directions; and then we denounce and condemn him for what he disowns. It was in this way that Augustine filled out for Pelagius the gaps in his scheme, which he thought it necessary to do, in order to make Pelagius's teaching consistent and complete; and Pelagius, in his turn, drew inferences from the Augustinian theology, about which Augustine would have preferred to maintain a discreet silence. Neither Augustine nor Calvin was anxious to make prominent the doctrine of the reprobation of the wicked to damnation, but preferred to dwell on the more attractive, more rational tenet of the elect to salvation, as subjects of the divine choice and approbation; substituting for the obnoxious word reprobation the milder, euphemistic word preterition. It was their opponents who were bent on forcing them out of their reserve, pushing them into what seemed the consistent sequence of their attitude, and then holding it up before the world for execration. And the same remark would apply to almost every theological contention that has embittered the church's experience.”
C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example: (a) that the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end; (b) that the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state; (c) that ability is the measure of obligation,—a principle which would diminish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin; (d) that law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature; (e) that each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.
(a) Neander, Church History, 2:564-625, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be“the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.”There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself.—“Volition is an everlasting‘tick,’‘tick,’and swinging of the pendulum, but no moving forward of the hands of the clock follows.”“There is no continuity of moral life—nocharacter, in man, angel, devil, or God.”—(b) See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1:212-233; Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology:“The sinner is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel.”Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 399—“The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom.”“By mere volition the soul now aplenumcan become avacuum, or now avacuumcan become aplenum.”On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 37-44.
(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.
(c)Ps. 79:8—“Remember not against us the iniquities of our forefathers”;106:6—“We have sinned with our fathers.”Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effects of parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:316, 317—“Neither theatomisticnor theorganicview of human nature is the complete truth.”Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39, 51-64, 161, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 3:50-54)—“Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual, that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.
“Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not[pg 601]held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-isolating spirit says:‘Am I my brother's keeper?’(Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between individual misfortune andindividualsin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in Ex. 34:9, David in Ps. 51:6, Isaiah in Is. 59:9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.
“Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man became a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression:‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh’(John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy in the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses we have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best,—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race,—that is, to complain of one's own existence.”See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:93-110; Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 1:287, 296-310; Martensen, Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1:74-97; Dabney, Theology, 296-302, 314, 315.
2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.
According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.
The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12,“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by[pg 602]divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.
See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.
See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born“does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.”Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.
John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.
Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that“Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under‘the free gift,’the effects of the‘righteousness’of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”
It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was underobligationto restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as agraciousability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that“grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”
Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this“grace”is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and[pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.”McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.
With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:
A. We grant that there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, if by the Holy Spirit is meant the natural light of reason and conscience, and the manifold impulses to good which struggle against the evil of man's nature. But we regard as wholly unscriptural the assumptions: (a) that this gift of the Holy Spirit of itself removes the depravity or condemnation derived from Adam's fall; (b) that without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect; and (c) that at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.
John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.
John Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text:John 1:9—“the light which lighteth every man”—which refers to the natural light of reason and conscience which the preincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. This light can be called the Holy Spirit, because it was“the Spirit of Christ”(1 Pet. 1:11). The Arminian view has a large element of truth in its recognition of an influence of Christ, the immanent God, which mitigates the effects of the Fall and strives to prepare men for salvation. But Arminianism does not fully recognize the evil to be removed, and it therefore exaggerates the effect of this divine working. Universal grace does not remove man's depravity or man's condemnation; as is evident from a proper interpretation ofRom. 5:12-19and ofEph. 2:3; it only puts side by side with that depravity and condemnation influences and impulses which counteract the evil and urge the sinner to repentance:John 1:5—“the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”John Wesley also referred toRom. 5:18—“through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”—but here the“all men”is conterminous with“the many”who are“made righteous”inverse 19, and with the“all”who are“made alive”in1 Cor. 15:22; in other words, the“all”in this case is“all believers”: else the passage teaches, not universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.
Arminianism holds to inherited sin, in the sense of infirmity and evil tendency, but not to inherited guilt. John Wesley, however, by holding also that the giving of ability is a matter of grace and not of justice, seems to imply that there is a common guilt as well as a common sin, before consciousness. American Arminians are more logical, but less Scriptural. Sheldon, Syst. Christian Doctrine, 321, tells us that“guilt cannot possibly be a matter of inheritance, and consequently original sin can be affirmed of the posterity of Adam only in the sense of hereditary corruption, which first becomes an occasion of guilt when it is embraced by the will of the individual.”How little the Arminian means by“sin,”can be inferred from the saying of Bishop Simpson that“Christ inherited sin.”He meant of course only physical and intellectual infirmity, without a tinge of guilt.“A child inherits its parent's nature,”it is said,“not as a punishment, but by natural law.”But we reply that this natural law is itself an expression of God's moral nature, and the inheritance of evil can be justified only upon the ground of a common non-conformity to God in both the parent and the child, or a participation of each member in the common guilt of the race.
In the light of our preceding treatment, we can estimate the element of good and the element of evil in Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:232—“It is an exaggeration when original sin is considered as personally imputable guilt; and it is going too far when it is held to be the whole state of the natural man, and yet the actually present good, the‘original grace,’is overlooked....We may say, with Schleiermacher, that original sin is the common deed and common guilt of the human race. But the individual always participates in this collective guilt in the measure in which he takes part with his personal doing in the collective act that is directed to the furtherance of the bad.”Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—“Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to his posterity; but what it gives with one hand, it takes back with the other,[pg 604]attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the Fall. If the effects of Adam's Fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing,—salvation is not grace, but debt.”A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 187sq., denies the universal gift of the Spirit, quotingJohn 14:17—“whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him”;16:7—“if I go, I will send him unto you”;i. e., Christ's disciples were to be the recipients and distributers of the Holy Spirit, and his church the mediator between the Spirit and the world. ThereforeMark 16:15—“Go ye into all the world, and preach,”implies that the Spirit shall go only with them. Conviction of the Spirit does not go beyond the church's evangelizing. But we reply thatGen. 6:3implies a wider striving of the Holy Spirit.
B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) that inherited moral evil does not involve guilt; (b) that the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infants, are matters of justice; (c) that the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright; (d) that election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers; (e) that physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.
(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.
(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:58 (System of Doctrine, 2:352-359)—“With Arminius, original sin is originalevilonly, notguilt. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature....Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vitiosity is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in Scripture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent implies power to withhold consent. But this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin.”
(b) H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399—“A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too.”See Bib. Sac., 20:327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. onRom. 5:12,“the condition of an infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner,as one sure to sin, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. Thiswouldbe its condition, rather, for in Christ the infant is regenerate and justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of grace.”But we ask: 1. Why then do infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act, if, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctification? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and justification of infants contradict Scripture and observation.
(c) Notice that this“gracious”ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of his natural ability lost by Adam's sin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self.1 Cor. 4:7—“who maketh thee to differ?”Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminians, who hold to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular, irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or, in other words, bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright.“Grace”is a word much used by Arminians. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viii—“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable[pg 605]to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.”It is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself—if he will. Arminian grace is evenly bestowed grace of spiritual endowment, as Pelagian grace is evenly bestowed grace of creation. It regards redemption as a compensation for innate and consequently irresponsible depravity.
(d) In the Arminian system, the order of salvation is, (1) faith—by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees not tooriginatefaith, but torewardit. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe. The Augustinian order, on the contrary, is (1) regeneration; (2) faith; (3) justification. Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 255—“My objection to the Arminian or semi-Arminian is not that they make the entrance very wide; but that they do not give you anything definite, safe and real, when you have entered.... Do not believe the devil's gospel, which is achanceof salvation: chance of salvation is chance of damnation.”Grace is not arewardfor good deeds done, but apowerenabling us to do them. Francis Rous of Truro, in the Parliament of 1629, spoke as a man nearly frantic with horror at the increase of that“error of Arminianism which makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man”; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:277. Arminian converts say:“I gave my heart to the Lord”; Augustinian converts say:“The Holy Spirit convicted me of sin and renewed my heart.”Arminianism tends to self-sufficiency; Augustinianism promotes dependence upon God.
C. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (b) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will. (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom. (d) That ability is the measure of obligation. (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (f) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.
(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”
(b) Raymond says:“Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character irrespective of its origin. Freedomfroman act is as essential to responsibility as freedomtoit. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of it.”But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.
Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:28—“Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal is the freedom which is identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally,i. e., with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities.”Real freedom is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a“moral necessity”of good, so it can through sin reach a“moral necessity”of evil.
(c) Park:“The great philosophical objection to Arminianism is its denial of thecertaintyof human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one.... The Arminians believe that it is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act in this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing,[pg 606]antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would notcertainlysin. The old Calvinists believe that antecedently to the Fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the Fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in‘power to the contrary’is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though he is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false‘power to the contrary’isuncertaintyhow one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Arminian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes.”
(e) Whedon, On the Will, 338-360, 388-395—“Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offices, one judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's concreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable.”
D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin, however, be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent; and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.
Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.
Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:86-89, holds it“theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions.”J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 26-33—“It is possible to walk from the cradle to the grave, not indeed altogether without sin, but without any period of alienation from God, and with the heavenly life developing along with the earthly, as it did in Christ, from the first.”But, since grace merely restores ability without giving the disposition to use that ability aright, Arminianism does not logically provide for the certain salvation of any infant. Calvinism can provide for the salvation of all dying in infancy, for it knows of a divine power to renew the will, but Arminianism knows of no such power, and so is furthest from a solution of the problem of infant salvation. See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:320-326; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac. 23:206; 28:279; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:56sq.