4. Importance of the Doctrine

ity, the churches gave themselves to tance emphasizing the depth of the injury of the and especially its sinfulness. Even the Doctrine. Council of Trent acknowledged the transfusion into the entire human race of "sin, which is the death of the soul." The Protestants, who, as convinced Augustinians, were free from the Pelagianizing bias of Rome, were naturally even more strenuous in asserting the evil and guilt of native depravity. Accordingly they constantly remark that men's native guilt in the sight of God rests not merely upon the imputation to them of Adam's first sin, but also upon the nor ruption which they derive from him--a mode of statement which meets us, indeed; as early as Peter Lombard (" Sentences," II., xxx.) and for the same reason. The polemic turn given to these statements has been the occasion of a remarkable misapprehension, as if it were intended to subordinate the imputation of Adam's transgression to the transmission of his corrupted nature as the source of human guilt. Precisely the contrary is the fact. The imputation of Adam's transgression was not in dispute; all parties to the great debate of the age fully recognized it; and it is treated therefore as a matter of course. What was important was to make it clear that native depravity was along with it the ground of our guilt before God. Thus it was sought to hold the balance true, and to do justice to both elements in a complete doctrine of original sin. Meanwhile the recovery of the great doctrine of justification by faith threw back its light upon the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ which had been in the possession of the Church since Anselm; and the better understanding of this doctrine, thus induced, in turn illuminated the doctrine of sin, whose correlative it is. Thus it came about that in the hands of the great Protestant leaders of the sixteenth century, and of their successors; the Protestant . systematizers of 'the seventeenth century, the threefold doctrine of imputation-of Adam's sin to his posterity, of the sins of his people to the Redeemer, and of the righteousness of Christ to his people-at last came to its rights as the core of the three constitutive doctrines of Christianitythe sinfulness of the human race, the satisfaction of Jesus Christ; and justification by faith. The importance of the doctrine of imputation is that it is the hinge on which these three great doctrines turn, and the guardian of their purity.

Of course the Church was not permitted to enjoy in quiet its new understanding of its treasures of doctrine. Radical opponents arose in 5. Socinian, the Reformation age itself, the most Arminian, important of whom were the Socinians and Ra- (see Socinus, SOCINIANISM). By them tionalistic it was pronounced an inanity to speak Opposition. of the transference of either merit or demerit from one person to another: we can be bad with another's badness,, or good with another's goodness, they said, as little as we can be white with another's whiteness. The center of the Socinian assault was upon the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ: it is not possible, they affirmed, for one person to bear the punishment due to another. But their criticism cut equally deeply into the Protestant doctrines of original sin and justification by faith. The influenoe.of their type of thought, very great from the first, increased as time went on and became a factor of importance both in the Arminian revolt at the beginning of the seventeenth oentury and in the rationalistic defection a hundred years later. Neither the Arminians (e.g., Limborch, Curcellaeus), nor the Rationalists (e.g., Wegscheider) would hear of an imputation of Adam's sin, and both attacked with arguments very similar to these of the Socinians also the imputation of our sins to Christ or of his righteous.

467

to us. Rationalism almost ate the heart out of the Lutheran Churches; and the Reformed Churches were saved from the same fate only by the prompt extrusion of the Arminian party and the strengthening of their position by conflict with it. In particular, about the middle of the seventeenth century the " covenant " or " federal " method of exhibiting the - plan of the Lord's dealings with men (see Cocceius, Johannes, and His School) began to find great acceptance among the Reformed Churches. There was nothing novel in this mode of conceiving truth. The idea was present to the minds of the Church Fathers and the Schoolmen; and it underlay Protestant thought, both Lutheran and Reformed, from the beginning, and in the latter had come to clear expression, first in Ursinus. But now it quickly became dominant as the preferable manner of conceiving the method of the divine dealing with men. The effect was to throw into the highest relief the .threefold doctrine of imputation, and to make manifest as never before the dependency of the great doctrines of sin, satisfaction, and justification upon it.

About the same time a brilliant French professor, Josue de la Place (see Placeus, Josua), of the Reformed school at Saumur, reduced

6. La Place all that could be called the imputation and Later of Adam's sin to his posterity simply Theologians to this-that because of the sin in and Schools. herent in us from our origin we are deserving of being treated in the same way as if we had committed that offense. This confinement of the effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity to the transmission to them of a Sinful disposition-inherent sin-was certainly new in the history of Reformed thought: Andreas Rivetus (see Rivet, Andre) bad no difficulty in collecting a long line of "testimonies" from the confessions and representative theologians explicitly declaring that men are accounted guilty in God's sight, both because of Adam's act of transgression imputed to them and of their own sinful disposition derived from him. The conflict of views was no doubt rendered sharper, however, by the prevalence at the time of the "Covenant .theology" in which the immediate imputation of Adam's transgression is particularly clearly emphasized. Thus " imme. diate" and "mediate" imputation (for by the latter name La Place came subsequently to call his view) were pitted against each other as mutually exclusive doctrines: as if the question at issue were whether man stood condemned in the sight of God solely on account of his "adherent" sin, or solely on account of his "inherent" sin. The former of these doctrines had never been . held in the Reformed Churches, since Zwingli, and the latter had never been held in them before La Place. From the first both "adherent " and " inherent " sin had been confessed as the double ground of human guilt; and the advocates of the " Covenant theology " were as far as possible from denying the guilt of "inherent" sin. La Place's inapvation was as a matter of, course condemned by the Reformed worlds formally at the Synod of Charenton (1649-45) and in the Helvetic Consensus (1675): slid by argument at the hands of the leading theologians= Rivetus, Turretin, Maresius, Driessen, Leydecker, and Marck. But the tendencies of the time were in its favor and it made its way. It was adopted by theologians like Wyttenbach, Endemann, Stap fer, Roell, Vitringa, Venema; and after a while it found its way through Britain to America, where it has had an interesting history:forming one of the stages through which the New England Theology (q.v.) pawed on its way to its ultimate denial of the quality of sin involving guilt to anything but the voluntary acts of a free agent; and finally becoming one of the characteristic tenets of the so-called "New School Theology" of the Presby terian Churches. Thus it has come about that there has been much debate in America upon " imputation ," in the sense of the imputation of Adam's sin, and diverse types of theology have been framed, especially among the Congregationalists and Pres byterians, centering in differences of conception of this doctrine. Among the Presbyterians, for exam ple, four such types are well marked, each of which has been taught by theologians of distinction: These are (1) the "Federalistic," characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of " immediate im putation," represented, for example, by Dr. Charles Hodge; (2) the "New School," characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of " mediate imputation ," represented, for example, by Dr. Henry B. Smith; (3) the "Realistic," which teaches that all mankind were present in Adam as generic humanity, and sinned in him, and are therefore guilty of his and their common sin, represented, for example, by Dr. W. G. T. Shedd; and (4) one which may be called the "Agnostic," characterized by an attempt to accept the fact of the transmission of both guilt and depravity from Adam without framing a theory of the mode of their transmission or of their relations one to the other, represented, for example, by Dr. R. W. Landis. See Adam; Atonement; Justification; Redemption; Satisfaction; SIN.

Benjamin B. Warfield.

Bibliography: The literature of the subject is the literature of Original Sin, Atonement, and Justification (qqx.). Special treatment in usually given also in the systems of doctrinal theology, especially of the Calvinistic type. Consult: A. Revetus, Opera, iii. 798 sqq., Rotterdam, 1580; R. Ruesebi, Geschichte und Kritik der kirehlichen Lehre room Sündenfall, Leyden, 1801; C. Hodge, Theological Essays, pp. 128-217, New York, 1846; A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Ceatraldogmen, Zurich, 1854-56; W. Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of Ova Reformation, pp. 371 Hqq., Edinburgh, 1866; J. Buchanan The Doctrine of Justification, pp. 279, 321-323, 334, 337, ib., 1867; G. P. Fisher, in the New Englander, July, 1868; J. Wider, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, ii. 32 sqq., Edinburgh, 1868; T. J. Culwford, Doctrine of Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonement, pp. 181-183, 424, ib., 1871; R. W. Landis, The Doctrine of Original Sin as Received and Taught by the Churches, Richmond, 1884; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ii. 29, 42, 57-63,. 192-194, New York; 1888; H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theob opy, ed. W. S. Karr, pp. 283-323, ib., 1890; R. V. Foster. Systematic Theology, pp 408-413, Nashville, 1898; W. A. Brown, Christian Theology in Outline, pp. 285, 290-291, 3,11, 362, New York, 1906.