Part

4

 

Anthropology

 

1     Man’s Creation

 

Preliminary Considerations

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

Respecting man’s creation, Westminster Confession 4.2 teaches that “God created man male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls.” The first part of this statement is supported by Gen. 1:27: “Male and female created he them.” The second part is supported by 1:26: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”; by 2:7: “God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul”; by Eccles. 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it”; and by Matt. 10:28: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

In this statement, two particulars are to be marked. First, that man is bisexual: “God created man male and female.” This implies that the idea of man is incomplete if either the male or the female be considered by itself in isolation from the other. The two together constitute the human species. A solitary male or female individual would not be the species man nor include it nor propagate it. In Milton’s phrase: “Two great sexes animate the world.”

The angels are sexless. Like man, they were created “with reasonable and immortal souls,” but unlike him, they were not “created male and female”: “They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God” (Matt. 22:30). Angels being sexless are not a race or species of creatures. They were created one by one, as distinct and separate individuals. This is proved by the fact that they do not have a common character and history; some remain holy and some lapse into sin.

Second, that the body is of a different nature and substance from the soul: “God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (nepeš ḥayyâ),² a breath or soul of life (Gen. 2:7). According to this statement, man is composed of a material part resulting from the vivification of the dust of the ground by creative energy and of an immaterial part resulting from the spiration or inbreathing of God. The Creator first enlivens inorganic matter into a body and then creates a rational spirit which he infuses into it. The same difference between body and soul is taught in Eccles. 12:7: The “dust” returns to the earth, and the “spirit” returns to God. Christ “commends his spirit into God’s hands” and “and gave up the spirit” (Luke 23:46). Stephen said, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). “Jacob gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost” (Gen. 49:33). Job exclaims, “O that I had given up the ghost” (Job 10:18). “The hope of the wicked shall be as the giving up of the ghost” (11:20). “She has given up the ghost” (Jer. 15:9).

In Gen. 1:20 God says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life [lit., let the waters swarm a swarm of the soul of life (nepeš ḥayyâ)].”³ And in 1:21 it is said that “God created every living creature that moves [lit., God created every living soul of life that creeps]” (see also 1:24). The irrational animal is here denominated a “soul of life” as man is; but it is not added, as in the case of man, that God “breathed” the “soul of life” into him. On the contrary, the origin of animals is associated with the material world alone. When God creates man, he addresses himself: “Let us make man in our image” (1:26). But when he creates animals, he addresses the inanimate world: “Let the waters bring forth the moving creature” (1:20); “let the earth bring forth the living creature” (1:24). The “soul of life” in the instance of the animal is only the animal soul, which is physical and material in its nature, and perishes with the body of which it is the vital principle. The “soul of life” in the instance of the man is a higher principle, the rational soul, which was inbreathed by the Creator and made in his image. Hence it is said in Eccles. 3:21 that “the spirit (rûaḥ)⁴ of man goes upward,” and “the spirit (rûaḥ)⁵ of the beast goes downward to the earth.”

Theories of the Mode of Man’s Creation

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

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

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

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

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

It was his opinion, that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind; that the soul of the first man was the fountain head of all human souls, and that all varieties of individual human nature are but different modifications of that one spiritual substance. Hence the whole nature became corrupted in the original father of the race, and sinfulness is propagated at the same time with souls. Although this mode of apprehending the matter, in Tertullian, is connected with his sensuous habits of conception, yet this is by no means a necessary connection.

This last remark of Neander is important. Bellarmine claims Augustine as a creationist. Melanchthon and Klee reckon him among traducianists. Gangauf says that he was undecided. Delitzsch (Biblical Psychology §7) asserts that he was wrestling with the subject all his life. Luther, according to Delitzsch, was at first inclined to traducianism, being urged by Bugenhagen, but afterward distinguished the creation and infusion of the soul into the body as the second conception, from the first bodily conception. Smith (Theology, 168) asserts that “traducianism, on the whole, has been the most widely spread theory.” (See supplement 4.1.2.)

Turretin (9.12.6) remarks as follows respecting the traducian view:

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

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

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

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

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

Hase (Hutterus redivivus, 79) represents this view as having been favored by Aristotle and adopted by Ambrose, Jerome, Pelagius, Bellarmine, and Calixtus. Hagenbach (§106) mentions as advocates of creationism Lactantius, Hilary, and Jerome and remarks (§173) that this theory gained gradually upon traducianism in the Middle Ages. John of Damascus, Anselm, and Aquinas were creationists. Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, 12) says that the Lutheran theologians almost without exception adopted traducianism, while the Reformed divines with very few exceptions maintained creationism. Creationism has been the most common view during the last two centuries.

The choice must be made between traducianism and creationism, since the opinion that man as to his soul existed before Adam has no support from revelation. The Bible plainly teaches that Adam was the first man; and that all finite spirits existing before him were angels.

The question between the traducianist and the creationist is this: When God created the first two human individuals, Adam and Eve, did he create in and with them the invisible substance of all the succeeding generations of men, both as to the soul and body or only as to the body? Was the human nature that was created in Adam and Eve simple or complex? Was it physical solely, or was it psychico-physical? Had the human nature in the first pair two sides or only one? Was provision made for propagating out of the specific nature deposited in Adam individuals who would be a union of body and soul or only a mere body without a soul?⁶

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

Traducianism and creationism agree with each other in respect to the most difficult point in the problem, namely, a kind of existence that is prior to the individual existence. The creationist concedes that human history does not start with the birth of the individual man. He does not attempt to explain original sin with no reference to Adam. He maintains that the body and physical life of the individual is not a creation ex nihilo in each instance, but is derived from a common physical nature that was originated on the sixth day. In so doing, the creationist concedes existence in Adam, to this extent. But this race-mode of human existence, which is prior to the individual mode, is the principal difficulty in the problem, and in conceding its reality as to the body the creationist carries a common burden with the traducianist. For it is as difficult to think of an invisible existence of the human body in Adam as to think of an invisible existence of the human soul in him. In reality, it is even more difficult; because the body of an individual man, as we now know it, is visible and tangible, while his soul is not. And an invisible and intangible existence in Adam is more conceivable than a visible and tangible.

In discussing either traducianism or creationism, it is important to define the idea of substance. The term, in this connection, does not imply either extension or figure. It is taken in its etymological and metaphysical sense to denote that entity which stands under phenomena and is the base for them. As in theology, the divine “substance” or nature is unextended and formless yet a real entity, so in anthropology, the human “substance” or nature is without extension and figure yet is a certain amount of real being with definite and distinguishable properties (Shedd, Theological Essays, 135–37).

So far as the mental or psychical side of the human nature is concerned, when it is said that the “substance” of all individual souls was created in Adam, of course nothing extended and visible is implied. The substance in this case is a spiritual, rational, and immortal essence similar to the unextended essence of God, in whose image it was made ex nihilo. And so far as the physical and corporeal side of man is concerned, the notion of “substance” must be determined in the same manner. That which stands under, that which is the substans of the corporeal form and phenomena, is an invisible principle that has no one of the geometrical dimensions. Physical life, or the animal soul, though not spiritual and immortal like the rational soul, is nevertheless beyond the reach of the five senses. It occupies no space; it is not divisible by any material instruments; it cannot be examined by the microscope. In speaking therefore of the primary created “substance” of the human body, we must abstract from the notion everything that implies figure and extension of parts: “The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). The visible body is constituted and built up by an invisible vitality. Neither the cell nor protoplasm nor the “ether” of Carus (Physiology 1.13) nor any visible whatever can be regarded as the substans of the body, as the vital principle in its primordial mode. These are all of them extended and objects of sensuous perception. They are the first form, in which the primarily formless physical life embodies itself. They each presuppose life as an invisible. In thinking, therefore, of the “substance” of all individual bodies as having been created in Adam, we must not with Tertullian and others think of microscopic atoms, corpuscles, or protoplasm; but only of the unseen principle of life itself, of which these are the first visible organization. Modern physiology (Haeckel, Creation 1.297) describes the human egg as one one-hundred-twentieth of an inch in diameter, so that in a strong light it can just be perceived as a small speck, by the naked eye. This egg is a small globular bladder which contains all the constituent parts of a simple organic cell. These parts are (a) the mucous cell substance or protoplasm, called the “yolk”; (b) the nucleus or cell kernel, called the “germinal vesicle,” which is surrounded by the yolk (this nucleus is a clear glassy globule of albumen about one six-hundredth of an inch in diameter); and (c) the nucleolus, the kernel speck or “germinal spot” (this is enclosed and surrounded by the nucleus and is the last phase of visible life under the present microscope). This nucleolus is not the invisible life itself in its first phase, as immediately created ex nihilo. This “germinal spot” is only the first hardening, as it were, of the invisible into visibility. It is life in this form; whereas, in the beginning, as created in Adam, physical life was formless and invisible.

General Approaches to the Doctrine of Original Sin

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

It may be held simply as a revealed fact without any attempt at explanation. The theologian contents himself with affirming that Scripture teaches that all men were created holy in Adam, had an advantageous probation in Adam, sinned freely in Adam, and are justly exposed to physical and spiritual death upon these three grounds and declines to construct any explanatory theory. In this case, he treats the doctrine of original sin as he does that of the creation of the universe: “Through faith he understands that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). Similarly, through faith he understands that “death passed upon all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12); that “by one offense, judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Rom. 5:18); and that “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22); and formulates this in the statement that “all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him, and fell with him, in the first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). But as he does not undertake to explain creation ex nihilo, neither does he undertake to explain the fall in Adam. He accepts the fact of revelation in each case. He has reason to believe that the doctrine of the fall in Adam is truth not error: first, because God would not reveal error; second, because God has made an infinite self-sacrifice in order to deliver man from the guilt and pollution of original sin: a thing he would not have done if he knows that it is not really and truly sin.

The doctrine may be held as a revealed fact, and an explanation attempted by the theory of natural or substantial union with Adam. In this case, Adam and his posterity existed together and sinned together as a unity. The posterity were not vicariously represented in the first sin, because representation implies the absence of the party represented; but they sinned the first sin being seminally existent and present; and this first sin is deservedly imputed to them, because in this generic manner it was committed by them. The guilt of the first sin, both as culpability (culpa) and obligation to the penalty of eternal death (reatus poenae), is chargeable to Adam and his posterity upon the common principle that sin is chargeable to the actor and author of it. The imputation of Adam’s sin, upon this theory, differs from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in being deserved, not undeserved or gratuitous.

The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by the theory of representative or forensic union with Adam. In this case, Adam as an individual, distinct from Eve, and distinct from his posterity whom in respect to the soul he did not seminally include, sinned representatively and vicariously for his nonexistent and absent posterity. As their vicar and representative, he disobeyed the Eden statute in their room and place, precisely as Christ obeyed the moral law, in respect to both precept and penalty, as the vicar and representative of his people. The sin of Adam, consequently, is imputed to his posterity in the very same way that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer—namely, undeservedly or gratuitously. The posterity are not guilty in the sense of being inherently and personally ill deserving on account of Adam’s sin, just as the believer is not righteous in the sense of being inherently and personally deserving on account of Christ’s obedience. As in the latter instance, only the consequences without the inherent merit of Christ’s obedience—namely, freedom from the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and a title to eternal life—inure to the believer; so in the former instance, only the consequences of Adam’s disobedience without the inherent demerit—namely, the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and forfeiture of a title to eternal life—inure to his posterity. On this theory, Adam’s sin itself, as a disobedient and rebellious act causative of the penalty of eternal death, is not imputed to the posterity because it was not committed by them. Only its penal consequences are imputed. Adam’s act is separated from its effect, namely, the penalty: the former not being chargeable to the posterity; the latter being imputed to and inflicted upon them. The posterity suffer the punitive evil produced by Adam’s sin but are not inherently and personally guilty of this sin itself.

The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by a combination of natural with representative union. This is a middle theory between traducianism and creationism, combining elements of both. But like middle theories generally, it contains contradictory elements. If the posterity were present, as natural union implies, they could not be represented; for this supposes absence. If they were absent, as representative union implies, they could not be present, as natural union supposes. A consistent scheme can be constructed upon either view of the Adamic union by itself, but not upon both in combination.⁷ This is evinced by the fact that the tendency on the part of the advocates of representation has been to minimize natural union in the combination. The latest and one of the ablest of its defenders, the elder Hodge, founds imputation solely on representation (45). It is important to observe that the earlier advocates of the combination, such as Turretin, for example, asserted that Adam’s sin is imputed both as culpa⁸ and reatus poenae.⁹ Some of the later advocates assert that it is imputed only as reatus poenae—only as obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death.

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

Any man who holds that there is such an ascription of the sin of Adam to his posterity, as to be the ground of their bearing the punishment of that sin, holds the doctrine of imputation; whether he undertakes to justify this imputation merely on the ground that we are the children of Adam or on the principle of representation or of scientia media;¹⁰ or whether he chooses to philosophize on the nature of unity until he confounds all notions of personal identity, as President Edwards appears to have done. (Princeton Essays 1.139)

A fifth method is that of the ancient Semipelagian and the modern Arminian: The doctrine of original sin is received as a truth of revelation, and an explanation is attempted by the theory of representative union. Adam acted as an individual for the individuals of his posterity. The latter are not guilty of his first sin, either in the sense of culpability or of obligation to punishment, but are exposed on account of it to certain nonpenal evils—principally physical suffering and death. They do not either deserve or incur spiritual and eternal death on account of it. This results only from actual transgression, not from Adam’s sin.

The doctrine of the unity of Adam and his posterity in the commission of the first sin and the fall from God is of the utmost importance in anthropology. Without it, it is impossible to maintain the justice of God in the punishment of inherited sin. For it is evident that an individual person cannot be morally different from the species to which he belongs. He cannot be holy if his race is sinful. No individual can rise above his species and exhibit a character and conduct radically different from theirs. Consequently, in order to establish the responsibility and guilt of the individual in respect to the origin of sin, a foothold must be found for him in the being and agency of the race to which he belongs. He must exist in and act with his species. This foothold is furnished in the biblical doctrine of a primary existence and a primary act of the common human nature in Adam, of which the secondary individual existence and the secondary individual character and acts are the manifestation. Accordingly, all schools of evangelical anthropology have held to St. Paul’s representation of the Adamic connection, however differently they may have explained it. No one of them has adopted the Pelagian dogma of pure individualism and absolute isolation from Adam. In contending that the human species was a complete whole and an objective reality in the first parents, traducianism obtains a foundation for that community of action whereby a common sinful character was originated by a single voluntary act of apostasy, the consequences of which appear in the historical series of individuals who are propagated parts of the species. The sinful disposition of an individual is the evil inclination of his will; this evil inclination comes along in and with his will; and his will comes from Adam by ordinary descent. (See supplement 4.1.5.)

The perplexity into which a devout and thoughtful mind that resolutely holds the Augustinian position that inherited sin is damning and brings eternal death, while not holding the coordinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of the species in Adam, is thrown is seen in the following extract from Pascal:

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

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

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

Scriptural Support for Traducianism

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

˒ĕnôš¹⁴ signifies “man” not as Adam does, which also signifies man, but is used in Hebrew indifferently for man and woman; as it is written: “Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam” (Gen. 5:2), leaving no room to doubt that though the woman was distinctively called Eve, yet the name Adam, meaning man, was common to both. But Enos means man in so restricted a sense, that Hebrew linguists tell us it cannot be applied to woman.¹⁵ (See supplement 4.1.6.)

The same usage is found in the New Testament. In Rom. 7:1 St. Paul asks, “Know not, brethren, how that the law has dominion over the man (tou anthrōpou)¹⁶ as long as he lives?” The law spoken of is that of marriage, to which the wife equally with the husband is subject, both of whom are here denominated “the man.” When, in verse 2 the apostle wishes to individualize and distinguish the husband from the wife, he designates him not by anthrōpos¹⁷ but by anēr.¹⁸ When St. Paul asserts (1 Cor. 15:21) that “by man came death,” he means both Adam and Eve, whom in the next clause he denominates to adam.¹⁹ Again, our Lord is denominated the Son of Man (anthrōpou),²⁰ although only the woman was concerned in his human origin, showing that woman is “man.” When Christ (Matt. 12:5) asks: “How much then is a man better than a sheep?” he includes both sexes. When St. Paul addresses a letter to the “saints and faithful brethren which are at Colossae” (Col. 1:1) and St. John (1 John 3:15) asserts that “whosoever hates his brother is a murderer,” they mean both male and female alike and equally. And this original unity of species is referred to in St. Paul’s statement respecting the marriage relation: “They two shall be one flesh” (Eph. 5:31). In accordance with this, Augustine denominates Adam and Eve “the first men in paradise”²¹ (City of God 11.12). The elder Protestant divines call them protoplasti.²²

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

These two individuals, created ex nihilo in the manner thus described, are in Scripture sometimes both together called “man” and sometimes separately are called “male-man” (˒îš)²⁵ and “female-man” (˒iššâ),²⁶ man and woman (Gen. 1:27; 2:23). In and with them was also created the entire human species, namely, the invisible substance, both psychical and physical, of all their posterity. This one substance or “human nature” was to be transformed into millions of individuals by sexual propagation. The creation proper of “man” was finished and complete on the sixth day. After this, there is only the generation of “man.” The biblical phraseology now changes. Eve is “the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). Adam “fathered a son after his own image” (5:3). There is no longer any creation of man ex nihilo by supernatural power; but only the derivation of individual men out of an existing human substance or nature, by means of natural law, under divine providence and supervision.

The question now arises: Why is not this propagation only physical, as the creationist asserts? Why should not propagation be confined to the body?

The first reply is because it is contrary to Scripture. Certain texts forbid it. In John 3:6 Christ affirms that “that which is born (begotten) of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” The term flesh here denotes man in his entirety of soul and body. The spiritual birth certainly includes both; and the connection implies that the natural birth is equally comprehensive. Men, says our Lord, are born naturally of their parents and spiritually of God; and it is the same whole man in both instances. Now to the term flesh employed in this signification of the total person, Christ applies the participle gegennēmenon.²⁷ The flesh or man, consisting of soul and body together, is begotten and born. That sarx²⁸ often comprehends the soul as well as the body is clear from many passages (Matt. 24:22; Luke 3:6; John 1:14; 17:2; Acts 2:17; Rom. 3:20; 8:4–5, 8; Gal. 5:16, 19). In all these places “flesh” comprises both the psychical and physical nature of man. Christ employs it in the same signification in John 3:6 and teaches that it is a generation and birth.

Traducianism is taught in John 1:13. Here, the regenerate are said to be “begotten (egennēthēsan)²⁹ not of blood (human seed) nor of the will of the flesh (sexual appetite) nor of the will of man (human decision).” This implies that the unregenerate are “begotten of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man.” But an unregenerate man is an entire man, consisting of soul and body. His soul and body, therefore, were “begotten and born of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man.” In this passage, the soul sustains the same relation to generation and birth that the body does; both come under one and the same category.

In Rom. 1:3 it is said that Christ “according to the flesh (kata sarka)³⁰ was made of the seed of David.” The term flesh here denotes the entire humanity of our Lord, antithetic to his divinity, denominated pneuma hagiōsynēs.³¹ Christ’s soul and body together constituted his sarx;³² and this is represented as being “made of the seed of David.” St. Paul employs the verb ginōai³³ to denote a generation, in distinction from a creation, in the origin of Christ’s humanity. The connection forbids the confinement of this generation to the physical side of his human nature, so that his human body only, not his human soul, sprang from David (Shedd on Rom. 1:3).

In Heb. 12:9 it is said that “we have had fathers of our flesh (tēs sarkos hēmōn),³⁴ and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits (tōn pneumatōn)³⁵ and live?” This text is quoted by the creationist to prove that man is the father of the body only, God being the father of the soul. There are two objections to this explanation. (1) God is not called the “Father of our spirits,” which would be the required antithesis to “fathers of our flesh.” He is denominated “the Father of spirits” generally, not of human spirits in particular. The omission of hēmōn³⁶ with pneumatōn³⁷ shows that the fatherhood is universal—relating to men and angels. God is the heavenly Father in distinction from an earthly father. (2) Had the writer intended to set the human spirit in contrast with the human body, as the creationist interpretation supposes, he would have said “the Father of our spirit” (tou pneumatos hēmōn)³⁸ instead of “the Father of spirits” (tōn pneumatōn).³⁹ In this text, therefore, as in John 3:6, sarx⁴⁰ comprehends the whole man, soul and body. Chrysostom and Theophylact refer “spirits” in this text to angels exclusively. Calvin and Bengel find creationism in it. Moll (in Lange’s Commentary) and Ebrard find traducianism: “Neither here nor anywhere else does sarx mean body. (Therefore, this reference is incorrectly cited to support creationism, which teaches that only the body is engendered by the parents but the soul is created by God.) On the contrary, sarx here means, as always, the life that comes into existence naturally through creaturely power”⁴¹ (Ebrard, “Sarx”).

Traducianism is taught in Acts 17:26: God “has made of one blood all nations.” The natural interpretation of this text is that men of all nationalities are made of one common human nature as to their whole constitution, mental and physical. There is nothing to require the creationist qualification—“every man, as to his body”—but everything to exclude it. For the apostle was speaking particularly of man as rational, immortal, and having the image of God; and therefore in saying that “man is made of one blood,” he certainly could not have intended to exclude his rational soul in this connection.

In Heb. 7:10 it is said that “Levi,” that is, the whole tribe of Levi (v. 9), “was yet in the loins of father, when Melchizedek met” Abraham. Here Abraham is called the father of Levi, though he was Levi’s great-grandfather. Levi and his descendants are said to have had an existence that was real, not fictitious, in Abraham. But it contradicts the context to confine this statement to the physical and irrational side of Levi and his descendants. The “paying of tithes” which led to the statement is a rational and moral act and implies a rational and moral nature as the basis of it.

In Ps. 139:15–16 there is a description of the mysterious generation of man: “My substance was not hid from you when I was made in secret.” Though the reference is to the embryonic and fetal life, yet it includes the mental and moral part of man with the physical. The clauses I was made and my substance certainly denote the speaker as an entire whole. The same is true of Job 10:10: “Have you not poured me out as milk and curdled me like cheese?” “Me” here is the whole person. The total ego is described as begotten in Jer. 1:5: “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you.” In Ps. 22:9–10 David says, “You are he that took me from the womb. I was cast upon you from the womb; you are my God from my mother’s belly.”

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

First Cor. 15:22 supports traducianism: “In Adam (tō adam)⁴² all die.” The article shows that Adam here, as in Gen. 1:17, denotes Adam and Eve inclusive of the species. To “die in Adam” implies existence in Adam. The nonexistent cannot die. Merely metaphorical existence in Adam is nonexistence. Merely physical existence in Adam without psychical existence would allow physical death in Adam but not spiritual death. To die in Adam both spiritually and physically supposes existence in Adam both as to soul and body.

The same remark is true respecting Eph. 2:3: “We were by nature (physei)⁴³ children of wrath.” Here the term physis⁴⁴ denotes a real nature derived from foregoing ancestors, as in Gal. 2:15: hēmeis physei ioudaioi.⁴⁵ And this nature is the whole nature of man, not a part of it. The apostle does not mean to teach that men are exposed to divine displeasure because of a sensuous and physical corruption which belongs to the body in distinction from the soul, but because of a corruption that is mental as well as physical.

The word hēmarton⁴⁶ in Rom. 5:12 strongly supports the traducian view. The invariable usage in both the Old and New Testaments makes it an active verb. There is not a single instance of the alleged passive signification. Had the apostle meant to teach that all men were “regarded” as having sinned, he would not have said pantes hēmarton,⁴⁷ but pantes hēmartēkotes ēsan⁴⁸ as in Gen. 44:32; 43:9. But if all “sinned” in Adam in the active sense of hēmarton,⁴⁹ all must have existed in him. Nonentity cannot sin; and merely physical substance cannot sin (Shedd on Rom. 5:12).

These scriptural texts support the traducian position that the individual man is propagated as an entire whole consisting of soul and body and contradict that of the creationist that a part of him is propagated and a part is created. These biblical data countenance the view, however difficult it may be to explain it, that man being a unity of body and soul is begotten and born as such a unity. Says Edwards (Against Watts’s Notion of the Preexistence of Christ’s Human Soul):

To be the son of a woman is to receive being in both soul and body, in consequence of a conception in her womb. The soul is the principal part of the man; and sonship implies derivation of the soul as well as the body, by conception. Not that the soul is a [material] part of the mother as the body is. Though the soul is no [material] part of the mother, and be immediately given by God, yet that hinders not its being derived by conception; it being consequent on it according to a law of nature. It is agreeable to a law of nature, that when a perfect human body is conceived in the womb of a woman, and properly nourished and increased, a human soul should come into being: and conception may as properly be the cause whence it is derived, as any other natural effects are derived from natural causes and antecedents. For it is the power of God which produces these effects, though it be according to an established law. The soul being so much the principal part of man, a derivation of the soul by conception is the chief thing implied in a man’s being the son of a woman.

In saying that the soul is “no part of the mother as the body is,” that it is “immediately given by God” and yet that this “does not hinder its derivation by conception,” Edwards evidently means that the soul is not physical substance like the body and has a psychical in distinction from physical derivation or generation that is peculiar to itself.

Samuel Hopkins (Works 1.289) follows Edwards in saying that “the mother, according to a law of nature, conceives both the soul and body of her son; she does as much toward the one as toward the other, and is equally the instrumental cause of both.” Says Nitzsch: “That the individual dispositions of the soul are propagated by generation will scarcely be disputed.⁵⁰ Why not their generic dispositions also? Hence, we cannot but maintain the doctrine of derivation, together with creation” (Christian Doctrine §107). Weiss (Theology of the New Testament §67) explains St. Paul as teaching that “the soul is begotten.”

The few texts that are quoted in favor of creationism are as easily applicable to traducianism: “The souls which I have made” (Isa. 57:16). The context does not imply a distinction of the soul from the body. On the contrary, “soul” here is put for the whole person. Traducianism equally with creationism holds that God is the maker of the soul. The body, certainly, is propagated, yet God is its maker. Augustine (On the Soul 17) remarks that God may as properly be said to “make” or “create” in the instance of the propagation of the soul, as in that of its individual creation:

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

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

Theological Arguments for Traducianism

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

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

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

Anselm here uses “Adam” to designate the “human nature” created in Adam and Eve. (See supplement 4.1.7.)

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

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

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

I appeal to such as are habituated to examine things strictly and closely, whether, on supposition that all mankind had coexisted in the manner mentioned before, any good reason can be given why their Creator might not, if he had pleased, have established such a union between Adam and the rest of mankind as was in the case supposed. Particularly, if it had been the case that Adam’s posterity had, actually, according to a law of nature, somehow grown out of him and yet remained contiguous and literally united to him, as the branches to a tree or the members of the body to the head; and had all, before the fall, existed together at the same time though in different places, as the head and members are in different places: in this case, who can determine that the author of nature might not have established such a union between the root and branches of this complex being, as that all should constitute one moral whole; so that there should be a communion in each moral alteration and that the heart of every branch should at the same moment participate with the heart of the root, be conformed to it, and concurring with it in all its affections and acts, and so jointly partaking in its state, as a part of the same thing.

This is defective, in that Edwards supposes a unity composed of individual persons aggregated together, instead of a single specific nature not yet individualized by propagation, as in Augustinianism. But it shows that in his opinion, if a unity of action in the first sin can be obtained for all mankind, then the imputation of the first sin to them is just.

The following from Coleridge (Aids to Reflection 1.289 [ed. Harper]) also implies that if oneness of nature and substance between Adam and his posterity could be proved, the justice of imputing the first sin would follow: “Should a professed believer ask you whether that which is the ground of responsible action in your will could in any way be responsibly present in the will of Adam—answer him in these words: ‘You, sir, can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative.’ ”

The transmission of a sinful inclination is best explained by the traducian theory. “Original sin,” says Westminster Larger Catechism 26, “is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation, so that all that proceed from them in that way are conceived and born in sin” (Job 14:4; Ps. 51:5; 58:3; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3). This moral corruption, resulting from the first transgression, could not be transmitted and inherited unless there were a vehicle for its transmission, unless there were a common human nature, both as to soul and body, to convey it. Tertullian’s maxim is logical: “The transmission of sin [involves] the transmission of the soul.”⁵³ The transmission of sin requires the transmission of the sinning soul. Sin cannot be propagated unless that psychical substance in which sin inheres is also propagated. Sin cannot be transmitted along absolute nonentity. Neither can it be transmitted by a merely physical substance. If each individual soul never had any other than an individual existence and were created ex nihilo in every instance, nothing mental could pass from Adam to his posterity. There could be the transmission of only bodily and physical traits. There would be a chasm of six thousand years between an individual soul of this generation and the individual soul of Adam, across which “original sin” or moral corruption could not go “by natural generation.”

The difficulty of accounting for the transmission of sin upon the creationist theory has led some creationists to assert the creation of all individual human souls simultaneously with the creation of Adam and their quiescent state until each is united with its body. Ashbel Green adopts this view in his lectures on the catechism (Presbyterian Board edition). But this does not relieve the difficulty because, as distinct and separate individuals, the souls of the posterity could not commit the one single sin, the “one offense” of Adam. They could only sin “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Rom. 5:14), that is, imitate and repeat Adam’s sin; and there would be as many sins to be the cause of death as there were souls. These souls must therefore primarily have been a single specific psychical nature, in order to “sin in Adam and fall with him in his first transgression.”

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

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

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

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

Turretin marks the transition from the elder to the later Calvinism, from the theory of the Adamic union to that of the Adamic representation. Both theories are found in his system and are found in conflict. He vibrates from one to the other in his discussion of the subject of imputation. Sometimes he represents the union of Adam with his posterity as precisely like that of Christ with his people, namely, that of vicarious representation alone, without natural and seminal union. Adam’s posterity, he says, “did not yet exist in the nature of things”⁵⁵ when Adam’s sin was committed and consequently “in the same way that we are constituted sinners in Adam, even so we are constituted righteous in Christ. Now in Christ we are constituted righteous through the imputation of righteousness; therefore, we are constituted sinners in Adam through the imputation of his sin”⁵⁶ (9.9.16). Sometimes, on the other hand, he teaches that Adam’s posterity were “in the nature of things,”⁵⁷ having seminal existence in Adam, and for this reason the exaction of penalty from them is a matter of justice. The following is an example of this style of reasoning:

In the imputation of Adam’s sin, the justice of God does not exact punishment from the undeserving, but the ill deserving—ill deserving, if not by proper and personal ill desert, yet by a participated and common ill desert founded in the natural and federal union between Adam and us. As Levi was tithed by Melchizedek in the person of Abraham, so far as he was potentially in his loins, so that he was regarded as justly tithed in and with Abraham, who then bore the person of his whole family,⁵⁸ so, much more, can the posterity of Adam be regarded as having sinned in him, seeing that they were in him as the branches in the root, the mass in the first individuals and the members in the head.⁵⁹ (9.9.24–25)

This phraseology denotes more than vicarious representation. A representative, pure and simple, does not contain his constituents as the root contains the branches, as the first individuals contain the mass or species, as the head contains the members. Turretin defines Adam as the “stem, root, and head of the human race” (stirps, radix, et caput generis humani; 9.9.23), but qualifies this, by saying that he was so “not only physically and seminally, but morally and representatively.” But a representative proper could not be denominated the stem, root, and head of his constituents.

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

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

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

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

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

In the creeds and theological treatises, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, of the Reformation period, the unity of Adam and his posterity is described as natural, substantial, and specific. It is denoted by such terms as massa,⁶⁴ natura,⁶⁵ essentia.⁶⁶ And Adam means Adam and Eve inclusive of their posterity, as in the first chapter of Genesis: “For although in Adam and Eve the nature initially was created pure, good, and holy, nevertheless, through the fall, their sin entered into the nature”⁶⁷ (Formula of Concord, solid declaration; Hase, 643); “the entire human mass, nature, and essence itself was corrupted by the most evil power of Adam’s fall”⁶⁸ (Formula of Concord, epitome; Hase, 574). Witsius (Covenants 2.4.11) quotes Cloppenburg as saying that “the apostle in Rom. 5 did not so understand one man Adam as to exclude Eve: which is here the leading error of some.” De Moor-Marck (15.10) remarks respecting Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:14: “Nor does the apostle deny, on the other hand, the sin of the woman, when he teaches that the one man, whom he opposes to Christ as the type of the one to come (typon tou mellontos), is the author of propagated sin, in whom we all sinned and die, whom he also expressly calls Adam (cf. Rom. 5:12–19 with 1 Cor. 15:21–22).”⁶⁹ De Moor (5.10) cites Paraeus as making Adam to include Eve (a) by a common nature and (b) by husband and wife being one flesh (Gen. 2:24). Augustine (City of God 11.12) denominates Adam and Eve “the first men in paradise.”⁷⁰ Odo (Bibliotheca maxima patrum⁷¹ 21.230) remarks: “It is asked how we have sin from our origin, which is Adam and Eve.”⁷² All this agrees with St. Paul, who asserts that “the woman being deceived was in the [first] transgression” (1 Tim. 2:14). And the narrative in Genesis (3:16–19) shows that the punishment for the first sin fell upon Eve as well as upon Adam.

The elder Calvinistic theologians say nothing respecting representation. The term is foreign to their thought. The order with them is (1) specific existence in Adam, (2) specific participation in the first sin, (3) imputation of the first sin, and (4) inherence and propagation of original sin. Paraeus (on Rom. 5:12) explains pantes hēmarton⁷³ by “all sinned, that is, are held fast in guilt and in obligation to punishment.”⁷⁴ All men are both culpable and punishable. He proves that they are so by three particulars: (1) By participation in the first act of sin (participatione culpae)⁷⁵ because the posterity existed seminally in Adam: “All men committed the first sin when Adam committed it, as Levi paid tithes in the loins of Abraham, when Abraham paid them”; (2) by the imputation of the obligation to punishment resulting from participation in the first sin (imputatione reatus)⁷⁶ because “the first man so stood in grace, that if he should sin, not he alone but all his posterity should fall from grace and become liable with him to eternal death, according to the threatening, ‘In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die’ ”; and (3) by the propagation of the inherent corruption of nature which results from the participation in and imputation of the first sin. (See supplement 4.1.9.)

According to the elder Calvinism, as represented by Paraeus and those of his class, original sin propagated in every individual rests upon original sin inherent in every individual; original sin inherent in every individual rests upon original sin imputed to every individual; and original sin imputed to every individual rests upon original sin committed by all men as a common nature in Adam. On this scheme, the justice and propriety of each particular and of the whole are apparent. The first sin, which it must be remembered consisted of both an internal lust and an external act, of both an inclination and a volition, is justly imputed to the common nature because it was voluntarily committed by it, is justly inherent in the common nature because justly imputed, and is justly propagated with the common nature because justly inherent. This scheme if taken entire is ethically consistent. But if mutilated by the omission of one of more particulars, its ethical consistency is gone. To impute the first sin without prior participation in it is unjust. To make it inherent without prior imputation is unjust. To propagate it without prior inherence is unjust. The derangement of the scheme by omission has occurred in the later Calvinism. The advocate of mediate imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed either substantially or representatively. The advocate of representative imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed, except in the deluding sense of nominal and putative commission.

The elder Calvinism, like Augustinianism, starts with a unity, namely, Adam and his posterity in him as a common unindividualized nature. This unity commits the first sin: “all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). This sin is imputed to the unity that committed it, inheres in the unity, and is propagated out of the unity. Consequently, all the particulars regarding sin that apply to the unity or common nature apply equally and strictly to each individualized portion of it. The individual Socrates was a fractional part of the human nature that “sinned in and fell with Adam in his first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). Consequently, the commission, imputation, inherence, and propagation of original sin cleave indissolubly to the individualized part of the common nature, as they did to the unindividualized whole of it. The distribution and propagation of the nature make no alteration in it, except in respect to form. Its natural properties and characteristics by creation and its acquired properties and characteristics by apostasy remain unchanged.

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

Two things should be distinctly noticed; first, that our nature being so totally vitiated and depraved, we are on account of this very corruption considered as deservedly condemned in the sight of God. And this liability (obligatio) arises not from the fault of another (alieni delicti). For when it is said that the sin of Adam renders us obnoxious to divine judgment, it is not to be understood as if we being innocent were undeservedly loaded with the guilt (culpam) of his sin. We derive from him not only the punishment, but also the pollution to which the punishment is justly due. Wherefore Augustine, though he frequently calls it the sin of another, in order to indicate its transmission to us by propagation, yet at the same time also asserts it to belong properly to every individual. Therefore infants themselves, as they bring their condemnation into the world with them, are rendered obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness, not by the sinfulness of another. For though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, yet they have the seed of it within them, nay, their whole nature is as it were a seed of sin and therefore odious and abominable to God. Whence it follows that it is properly accounted sin in the sight of God because there could not be liability to punishment without guilt (quia non esset reatus absque culpa).⁷⁷

The later Calvinism, in some of its representatives, takes the extreme ground of rejecting natural union altogether, as a support of the doctrine of imputation, and resting it wholly upon representation. The elder Hodge is one of the most positive and ablest of this class.⁷⁸ “Adam,” he says (Princeton Essays 1.187), “was our representative; as a public person, we sinned in him in virtue of a union resulting from a covenant or contract. Let it be noted, that this is the only union here [Westminster Larger Catechism 22] mentioned. The bond arising from our natural relation to him as our parent is not even referred to.” The objections to this statement are the following: (1) The Westminster Larger Catechism denominates Adam a “public person,” but does not denominate him a “representative.” The term representative is not once employed in the Westminster standards. It has been introduced from the outside to define a “public person.” (2) The Westminster Larger Catechism gives its own definition and defines a “public person” as one “from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation.” Here, only our natural relation to Adam is mentioned; as it is also in Westminster Confession 6.3, where “our first parents,” as public persons, are denominated “the root of all mankind.” Natural not representative union is the “only” union referred to in this definition of a public person by the terms root, descent, and ordinary generation. A representative is not the root of his constituents nor do they descend from him by ordinary generation. (3) The Westminster Larger Catechism states that the covenant was made “with Adam as a public person.” Consequently, Adam could not have been made a public person by the covenant nor could the union between him and his posterity “result from the covenant or contract,” as Hodge asserts. Adam and his posterity, prior to the covenant of works, had been made a natural unity by the creative act of God, as the traducianist contends or else a representative unity by the sovereign act of God as Hodge contends; and with this unity, God established the covenant of works. The covenant presupposes the unity, in both cases. (See supplement 4.1.10.)

Natural union is excluded and representative union made the sole ground of the imputation of Adam’s sin in the following statement of Hodge:

In the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, and of our sins to Christ, and of Christ’s righteousness to believers, the nature of the imputation is the same, so that the one case illustrates the others. By virtue of the union between Adam and his descendants, his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people. (Theology 2.194–95)

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

Examination of the Westminster standards evinces that in the judgment of their authors natural or substantial union is the true ground of the imputation of Adam’s sin and that vicarious representation is inadequate. They never once use the verb represent or the noun representative in the Confession of Faith and catechisms—a fact utterly inconsistent with the assertion that “representative union was the only one they maintained.” The avoidance and total omission of these terms when they were making careful definitions of Adam’s sin shows that they regarded them as unsuitable in this connection. The terms represent and representative, it is true, occur in the theological treatises of this period, even in those of the Westminster divines themselves; but they are excluded from their dogmatic formulas, because while in a loose popular sense Adam may be called a representative of the posterity whom he seminally included, in the strict scientific sense he cannot be. A thing existing in one mode is sometimes said to represent itself as existing in another mode, as when the root is said to represent the tree. But the two are one and the same thing in two forms.

The Westminster Assembly explained original sin and its imputation by “natural generation,” “ordinary generation,” the figure of a “root,” and the phrase public person. All the passages in the Westminster documents relating to Adam’s sin are the following: “They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation” (Westminster Confession 6.3); “the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity” (7.2.3); “God gave to Adam a law, by which he bound him and all his posterity to obedience” (19.1); “original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity, by natural generation” (Westminster Larger Catechism 26); “the covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him, in that first transgression” (22); “the rule of obedience revealed to Adam and to all mankind in him, beside a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, was the moral law” (92).

In the first of these statements it is said that “the guilt of the first sin was imputed and death and corruption of nature is conveyed” because “our first parents were the root of all mankind.” This teaches natural not representative union, for the root does not vicariously represent the tree as something other than and different from itself and absent and apart from it, but it is the tree itself in the first mode of its existence. A root buried in the ground does not stand for an absent tree and still less for a nonexistent one. When a potato is planted, all the subsequent individuals are seminally present. The vital principle and substance that will produce them is all in the root. And the same is true when the figure of “seed” is taken instead of that of a “root,” as is so often the case in Scripture.

Again, when it is said that “original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation,” unity of substance and nature is taught. Whatever descends by natural generation must be seminally and substantially present in the progenitors. And the same is taught in the explanation of the phrase public person. A public person is described as one “from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation, in whom all mankind sinned and with whom all mankind fell in the first transgression.”

In all these Westminster statements, there is not a syllable that teaches that Adam was a nonspecific individual who vicariously represented a nonexistent and absent posterity. And even if it be conceded that the posterity were existent and present physically, their merely physical existence and presence would not justify the assertion that they “sinned with and fell in him.” The verbs sinned and fell and the prepositions with and in are too strong to be applied to the theory of vicarious representation. Men say that a constituent acts “by” his representative, not “in” and “with” him.

The temptation by Satan is best explained by traducianism. Upon the theory of creationism, it is impossible to account for the fall of the individual soul by means of a temptation of the devil. The individual soul viewed as newly created ex nihilo is holy. The Calvinistic creationist denies equally with the Calvinistic traducianist that God creates a soul without character. This is the Pelagian view. God’s creative work is always “good” and is so pronounced by him. The soul as a new creation must therefore first be positively holy and then freely fall from this created holiness into sin. And it must be tempted to fall. But on the creationist theory, there is no possibility of a temptation by Satan or from any other quarter. And no attempt is made by the representationist to explain the fall of the posterity by temptation. The only reason that he assigns is that God withdraws grace from the posterity. It is not so in the traducian theory. In the instance of the fall of the entire species in the first human pair, the species was tempted to fall in and with Adam. Adam and Eve were mature and perfect in all their powers—physical, intellectual, and moral. The human nature acted in and with the two sinless individuals, in and with whom it was created. In them it was tempted by Satan and yielded to the temptation.

The universality of sin is best accounted for by traducianism. The fall being that of the species in the first pair is of course coextensive with the species. But upon the creationist theory, the fall is that of the individual only. Each soul apostatizes from God by itself. Why should every soul without exception fall? Why not a fall of only a part, as in the case of the angels, who fell as individuals not as a species? A soul as created and holy “has the law written upon the heart, and power to fulfill it” (Westminster Larger Catechism 17). Why should it invariably apostatize?

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

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

If it be replied, as it is by those who combine representative with natural union, that between Adam and his posterity there is a natural union such as does not obtain between man and Lucifer and that this relieves the imputation of the first sin and withdrawal of grace from the charge of arbitrariness, this is creationism betaking itself to traducianism for support. Because, natural union when examined will be found to be race-union; and race-union must be total not partial, psychical as well as physical, in order to be of any use in justifying the imputation of Adam’s sin. Sin is mental, and a merely bodily connection with Adam is not a sufficient ground for imputing his transgression.

The representative theory of imputation endeavors to parry the objection to an arbitrary punishment for another’s culpability by separating punishment (poena) from culpability (culpa) and by asserting that Adam’s posterity are punishable for his sin but not culpable for it. They are compelled to endure penal suffering on Adam’s account, though they are not chargeable with his fault or crime. To this separation between the punishment and the culpability of Adam’s first sin, so frequently employed in the later Calvinism, but never in the earlier, there are the following objections.

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

Second, the separation of punishment from culpability is a characteristic of the Semipelagian and Arminian anthropology and when adopted introduces a Semipelagian and Arminian tendency into Augustinianism and Calvinism. Chrysostom and the Greek fathers generally make this separation. They explain hēmarton⁷⁹ in Rom. 5:12 to mean not “sinned” but “regarded as a sinner,” not culpability (culpa) but liability to suffer what is due to culpability (poena). They denied that the posterity of Adam participated by natural union in the first sin and are culpable and damnable for it. Adam, they contended, only represented his posterity in their nonexistence and absence, and consequently the statement of the apostle that “death passed upon all men for that all have sinned” means that all men are liable by the sovereign appointment of God to suffer certain evils on account of Adam’s sin but are not really guilty of it in his sight. This same interpretation reappears in the modern Arminianism. Grotius, Limborch, Locke, Whitby, John Taylor, Wahl, and Bretschneider explain hēmarton⁸⁰ in Rom. 5:12 to mean “to be exposed to suffering and death,” “to be regarded as sinners,” “to endure the punishment of sin”⁸¹ (Grotius), “to bear the culpability for sin”⁸² (Wahl, Clavis in voce). And the reason for giving such an uncommon signification to an active verb which nowhere else in Scripture has such a sense was the opinion that “all men sinned” representatively, not really. (See supplement 4.1.11.)

This is wholly foreign to Augustine. In his theory of imputation, “death passed upon all men because all men sinned”—not because “all men were reckoned to have sinned.” He explained hēmarton⁸³ in Rom. 5:12 in its active sense as denoting the act of the species in Adam. According to him, Adam’s sin is both culpable and punishable in the posterity. The culpability (reatus culpae) as well as the obligation to suffer penalty (reatus poenae) passes by participation, not by representation—an idea unknown to Augustine. Julian, for example, crowds him with the common objection that the posterity could not voluntarily sin in Adam “before they themselves were born and before even their parents or grandparents were begotten.” Augustine replies, first citing the high authority of Ambrose to the same effect, by saying: “Through the evil will of this man all sinned in him, when all were that one man”⁸⁴ (Opus imperfectum 4.104). The same reply is made in a multitude of instances (cf. Concerning Merits 1.9; 3.7; Concerning Marriages 2.5; Opus imperfectum 2.179; City of God 21.12). (See supplement 4.1.12.)

This Augustinian method of defending the imputation of Adam’s sin passed, as we have observed (pp. 451–52), to the Lutheran and Calvinistic creeds of the Reformation and to Calvinistic theologians generally, down to the seventeenth century. Turretin, we have seen (pp. 447–48), while laying the first stress upon representation, yet retains the doctrine of natural union in connection with it, though adopting creationism. With Augustine and the elder Reformed theologians, he regards culpability and punishability as inseparable; and the imputation of Adam’s sin, with him as with them, meant the imputation of both reatus culpae and reatus poenae. While holding, of course, to the separation of punishment from culpability in the instance of Christ’s vicarious atonement for sin, he denies that such separation is possible when the personal punishment of Adam’s posterity for original sin is the instance. The Tridentine theologians had misemployed this valid separation of the two obligations in the case of Christ’s suffering by transferring it to the ordinary ethical relations of man to the moral law in order to establish their doctrine of ecclesiastical penance. They contended that although the sacrifice of Christ had freed the believer from the culpability of original sin, it had not freed him altogether from its punishment, and therefore he was still bound, more or less, by the reatus poenae⁸⁵ and must therefore do penance. From the Tridentine divines, this separation passed subsequently, for a different dogmatic reason, to the Arminians and to some of the later Calvinists. Turretin combats this papistic distinction. He argues as follows to prove that when original sin is in question there is no possible separation between culpability and punishability and that if the sacrifice of Christ frees a believer from the culpability of original sin it frees him from all obligation to suffer the punishment of it:

The papists erroneously distinguish judicial obligation (reatus) into obligation of culpability (reatus culpae) and obligation to punishment (reatus poenae). Obligation of culpability, they say, is that whereby the sinner is undeserving of the favor of God but deserving of his wrath and condemnation; but obligation to punishment is that whereby he is liable to condemnation and is bound to it. The former obligation, they say, was taken away by Christ; but the latter can remain, at least in respect to the obligation to temporal punishment. But the falsity (vanitas) of this distinction is evident from the nature of each. For since culpability (culpa) and punishment (poena) are correlated, and judicial obligation (reatus) is nothing else than obligation to a punishment that springs from culpability (reatus nihil aliud est quam obligatio ad poenam quam nascitur ex culpa), they mutually establish or abolish each other (se mutuo ponunt et tollunt); so that if culpability and its obligation is taken away, punishment, which cannot be inflicted except on account of culpability, ought necessarily to be taken away. Otherwise it cannot be said that culpability is remitted and its obligation taken away, if anything still remains to be expiated by the suffering of the sinner.

De Moor on Marck (15.8) repudiates this separation of punishment from culpability in similar terms: “The papal distinction between the obligation of guilt and of punishment must altogether be repudiated.”⁸⁶ Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15), by quotations, shows that this was the common view among the elder Calvinists. Amesius (12.2) founds the obligation to suffer punishment on culpability. “Liability to punishment (reatus) is the obligation of the sinner to endure the just penalty on account of his guilt.”⁸⁷ Riissen (9.57) distinguishes between reatus potentialis⁸⁸ and actualis,⁸⁹ but rejects the distinction between reatus culpae⁹⁰ and reatus poenae:⁹¹

The obligation is either potential—which denotes the intrinsic dessert of punishment, which is inseparable from sin—or actual, which can be separated from it through God’s mercy, namely, through remission, which properly is the removal (ablutio) of the actual obligation. The former pertains to the demerit of sin and to the to katakritikon or condemnability of it, which always is connected to sin. But the latter pertains to the judgment of demerit or katakrima, condemnation, which is taken away from those for whom the pardon of sin has been accomplished.⁹² (9.59)

But the papists falsely distinguish the obligation of guilt and of punishment in the fall. The obligation of guilt is stated by them to be that by which the sinner, of himself, is unworthy of the grace of God but is worthy of his wrath and damnation. But the obligation of punishment is that by which he is made liable to damnation and is obligated to it.⁹³

Braun (1.3.3, 14) also distinguishes between potential and actual obligation, but denies that punishment can be separated from culpability:

The papists foolishly distinguish between the obligation of punishment and the obligation of guilt, as if it were possible that the obligation of guilt could be taken away from us with, nevertheless, the obligation of punishment remaining. It is as if Christ had freed us from guilt, but in such a way that we ourselves must undergo punishment, either in purgatory or elsewhere. This is totally false. For where there is no guilt, there is absolutely no obligation, and no penalty can be imagined.⁹⁴

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century, we find the elder Edwards objecting to the separation of punishment from culpability, which is implied in the passive signification given to hēmarton⁹⁵ by Taylor and the Arminian writers of that day:

No instance is produced wherein the verb sin which is used by the apostle, when he says “all have sinned,” is anywhere used in our author’s sense for “being brought into a state of suffering” and that not as a punishment for sin. St. Paul very often speaks of “condemnation,” but where does he express it “by being made sinners?” Especially how far is he from using such a phrase to signify being condemned without guilt or any imputation or supposition of guilt. Vastly more still is it remote from his language so to use the word sin and to say man “sins” or “has sinned,” though hereby meaning nothing more nor less than that he by a judicial act is condemned. He has much occasion to speak of “death,” temporal and eternal; he has much occasion to speak of “suffering” of all kinds, in this world and the world to come; but where does he call these things “sin” and denominate innocent men “sinners” or say that they “have sinned,” meaning thereby that they are brought into a state of suffering? (Original Sin 2.4.1)

The position that there may be punishment without culpability, in the instance of Adam’s posterity, is sought to be supported, as we have before noticed, by the parallel between Adam and Christ. It is said that Christ confessedly suffered punishment “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2) without being culpable for them, and therefore Adam’s posterity may suffer punishment for Adam’s first sin without being culpable for it. If Christ may endure penal suffering for a sin in which he did not participate, then Adam’s posterity may also. This is the standing argument of the representationist and is often accompanied with the assertion that the two unities are so exactly alike that it is impossible for the traducianist to hold that Adam’s posterity are inherently and personally culpable through their union with Adam and not also hold that believers are inherently and personally meritorious through their union with Christ, that participation in Adam’s disobedience carries with it participation in Christ’s obedience. But examination will show that the two unities, though alike in some particulars, are wholly unlike in others, so that certain characteristics, particularly those of vicariousness and gratuitousness that are connected with one cannot be with the other. St. Paul himself directs attention to some points of difference in the parallel (Rom. 5:15–16).

In the first place, Christ suffered freely and voluntarily for the sin of man, but Adam’s posterity suffer necessarily and involuntarily for the sin of Adam. Christ was under no obligation to suffer penalty for man’s sin and had he so pleased need not have suffered for it: “No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17–18; Phil. 2:6–7). But Adam’s posterity owe penal suffering on account of Adam’s sin and have no option in regard to its endurance. They do not, like Christ, volunteer and agree to suffer, but are compelled to suffer; and their suffering, unlike that of Christ, is accompanied with the sense of ill desert. Original sin as imputed, inherent, and propagated; is felt to be guilt; is confessed as such; and is forgiven as such. This implies that, unlike Christ, they must in some way have committed the sin for which they feel personally guilty and for which they are liable to suffer eternal death.

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

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

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

Fifth, the guilt of Adam’s sin did not rest upon Christ as it does upon Adam’s posterity, and hence he could voluntarily consent and agree to endure its penalty, without being under obligation to do so. Christ was free from the guilt of Adam’s sin, both in the sense of culpa⁹⁶ and poena.⁹⁷ But the posterity are obligated by both. Christ therefore suffers as an innocent person to expiate a sin in which he did not participate; but Adam’s posterity suffer as guilty persons to satisfy the law for a sin in which they did participate.⁹⁸ (See supplement 4.1.13.)

This comparison of the union of Christ and his people with that of Adam and his posterity shows clearly that Christ’s relation to the penal suffering which he voluntarily endured was radically different in several particulars from that which Adam’s posterity sustain to the penal suffering which they involuntarily endure and that it is a great error to argue from one union to the other, so far as these particulars are concerned and especially in regard to the particulars of vicariousness and gratuitousness.⁹⁹

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

Those who force the parallel between Adam and Christ so far as to make the imputation of Adam’s sin precisely like that of Christ’s righteousness commit the great error of supposing that sin, like righteousness, may be imputed to man in two ways: meritoriously and unmeritoriously or gratuitously. This is contrary both to Scripture and reason. St. Paul teaches that righteousness may be imputed either kata opheilēma¹⁰⁰ or kata charin¹⁰¹ = dōrean¹⁰² = chōris ergōn¹⁰³ (Rom. 3:21, 24, 28; 4:3–6). He asserts that righteousness may be placed to a man’s account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has obeyed or when he has not obeyed: “To him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that works not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (4:4–5). But St. Paul nowhere teaches the same thing respecting sin. He never says that sin may be put to a man’s account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has sinned or when he has not sinned. His doctrine is that of Scripture uniformly that sin is always imputed to man and angel kata opheilēma,¹⁰⁴ never dōrean,¹⁰⁵ never chōris ergōn,¹⁰⁶ never undeservedly and gratuitously. The punishment of man’s disobedience he denominates “wages,” but the reward of his obedience he denominates a “gift” (6:23). Christ’s obedience, which is the same thing as “the righteousness of God” (1:17; 9:3), can be a gift to his people; but Adam’s disobedience cannot be a gift to his posterity. Heaven can be bestowed upon the sinner for nothing that he has done; but hell cannot be. The characteristic of gratuitousness or absence of inherent desert can be associated with righteousness, but not with unrighteousness (Shedd on Rom. 4:3).

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

Christ by his obedience is rightly said to constitute us righteous not by inherent righteousness, but by imputed: as Rom. 4:6 teaches and 4:19 implies where the contrast with the antecedent condemnation is mentioned. For those are constituted righteous before God who are absolved from merited punishment on account of the obedience of Christ imputed to them not less than Adam’s posterity are constituted unrighteous, that is liable to death and condemnation, on account of the disobedience of Adam. Nor does it follow that because Adam constituted us unrighteous efficiently, through the propagation of inherent depravity (effectivé, per propagationem vitiositatis inhaerentis), on account of which we are liable to death before God, Christ in like manner constituted us forensically and judicially righteous before God by an inherent righteousness given to us by himself. Because the scope of the apostle, which alone is to be considered, does not tend to this, but only exhibits the ground of the condemnation on the one side and of the justification on the other, in our union with the first and second Adam respectively, as to the fact (rem), though the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject.¹⁰⁷ (16.2.19)

It is plain that Turretin here founds the imputation of Adam’s sin upon some kind of participation in it. Adam, he says, constituted his posterity unrighteous “efficiently, through the propagation of an inherent depravity.”¹⁰⁸ The propagation of inherent holiness is not the way in which Christ makes his people righteous. The ground of the imputation of Adam’s disobedience, according to this statement of Turretin, is different from that of the imputation of Christ’s obedience because “the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject” or agent. The former imputation rests upon something propagated, inherent, and subjective in the posterity; the latter rests upon something wholly objective—namely, the sovereign decision and judicial declaration of God.

The common distinction between legal and evangelical righteousness also shows that righteousness may be imputed in two ways, but sin in only one. “The foundation,” says Turretin (16.3.7), “of imputation is either in the merit and worth of the person to whom something is imputed or else it is outside of the person, in the mere grace and compassion of him who imputes. The first mode is legal imputation, and the last evangelical imputation.” It is clear that while both of these imputations apply to righteousness, only one of them is applicable to sin. Obedience may be imputed to man both legally and evangelically, but disobedience may be imputed to him only legally. (See supplement 4.1.14.)

The inference that because God gratuitously imputes Christ’s righteousness to Christ’s righteousness to Christ’s people he also gratuitously imputes Adam’s sin to Adam’s posterity is the same kind of fallacy that lies in the inference that because God works in the human will “to will and to do” when it wills rightly, he also works in it “to will and to do” when it wills wrongly. And to argue that if gratuitous imputation is not true in the case of Adam’s sin it is not true in the case of Christ’s righteousness is like arguing that if God is not the author of sin by direct efficiency he is not the author of holiness by direct efficiency. Both errors proceed upon the false assumption that God sustains precisely the same relation to holiness and sin. But holiness and sin are absolute and irreconcilable contraries; so that some things that are true of the former are untrue of the latter. God may be the author of holiness, but not of sin. He can “give,” that is gratuitously and undeservedly impute, righteousness, but not unrighteousness. He can pronounce a man innocent when he is guilty because Christ has obeyed for him; but he cannot pronounce a man guilty when he is innocent because Adam disobeyed for him. These are self-evident propositions and intuitive convictions; and they agree with the scriptural representations respecting the difference between the imputation of righteousness and the imputation of sin.

Physiological Arguments for Traducianism

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

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

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

Naturalists generally define in the second manner, that is, as an aggregate of individuals. De Candolle defines a botanical species as “a collection of all the individuals which resemble each other more than they resemble anything else; which can by mutual fecundation produce fertile individuals; and which reproduce themselves by generation, in such a manner that we may from analogy suppose them to have sprung from a single individual” (“Species” in Penny Cyclopaedia) Quatrefages defines an animal species as “a collection of individuals more or less resembling each other, which may be regarded as having descended from a single primitive pair, by an uninterrupted and natural succession of families” (Human Species 1.3).

A species or a specific nature is that primitive invisible substance or plastic principle which God created from nonentity, as the rudimental matter of which all the individuals of the species are to be composed. The first oak tree, for example, contained the seminal substance of all oak trees. The Creator has exerted no strictly creative power in the line of the oak since he originated that vegetable species. He has exerted only a sustaining and providential agency in the propagation of individual oak after individual oak, as this agency is seen in the law of vegetable growth. This doctrine of the creation of a species is taught in Gen. 2:5: God “made every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew.”¹⁰⁹ This describes the origination ex nihilo of a species in the vegetable kingdom. A plant made by God “before it was in the earth and before it grew” could not have been an evolution out of the earth. It is true that into the composition of the first oak there entered various material elements that were already in existence, the earths and gases, but these did not constitute the oak proper. The oak itself, considered as a new and previously nonexistent species, was that invisible principle of vegetable life which the Creator originated ex nihilo in this particular instance, by which these earths and gases were built up into the visible oak. It belongs among those “things invisible” of which the eternal Son of God is said to be the Creator in Col. 1:16. It is one of those “things not seen” (mē phainomena)¹¹⁰ of which the “things seen” (ta blepomena)¹¹¹ are made (Heb. 11:1, 3). Hodge (Theology 2.80–82) explains the original invisibility of a species by the following quotations. Says Agassiz:

The immaterial [invisible]¹¹² principle determines the constancy of the species from generation to generation and is the source of all the varied exhibitions of instinct and intelligence which we see displayed. The constancy of species is a phenomenon dependent upon the immaterial [invisible] nature. All animals may be traced back in the embryo to a mere point upon the yolk of an egg, bearing no resemblance whatever to the future animal. But even here, an immaterial [invisible] principle which no external influence can prevent or modify is present and determines its future form; so that the egg of a hen can produce only a chicken, and the egg of a codfish only a cod.

Similarly Dana says that “the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea or potential element which is at the basis of every individual of the group.” “Here,” says Hodge, “we reach solid ground. Unity of species does not consist in unity or sameness of organic structure, in sameness as to size, color, or anything merely external; but in the sameness of the immaterial [invisible] principle or ‘potential idea’ which constitutes and determines the sameness of nature.”

This view of life as an invisible formative principle lies under all the historical physics and has been adopted by the leading scientific minds. None but the materialists have rejected it, and their speculations have been destructive of scientific progress whenever they have prevailed. Agassiz’s “invisible principle” and Dana’s “idea” or “potential element” is the same thing as the vis vitae¹¹³ of Haller, the nisus formativus¹¹⁴ of Blumenbach, the vis medicatrix naturae¹¹⁵ of Stahl, the “living principle” of Hunter, the “individuating principle” of Coleridge, the “animating form” of Saumerez. Says Saumerez (Physiology 1.16–17; cf. Heinroth, Anthropology, 54):

The animating form of a physical body is neither its external organization nor its figure nor any of those inferior forms which make up the system of its visible qualities; but it is the power, which not being that organization nor those visible qualities, is yet able to produce, to preserve, and to employ them. It is the presiding principle which constitutes the power of the system; the bond of its elementary part; the cement that connects them in one whole; the efficient cause whence the individuality of every system arises and in which the form it assumes resides. It is the power by which the human species differs from the brute, the brute from the vegetable, the vegetable from inanimate matter; it is the cause that inanimate matter is converted into organs living and active; that the acorn is evolved into an oak; that the brute embryo is evolved into an animal, and the human embryo into a man.

The generation and propagation of individuals succeeds the creation of a species in the biblical account. God having originated an invisible specific nature or substance, then provides for its division and propagation into a multitude of distinct and separate individuals. This is taught in Gen. 1:12: “The earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind.” This is vegetable propagation. The generation of the animal is taught in 1:22: “Be fruitful and multiply.” In the Mosaic cosmogony, the creation of a species is the base, and its evolution into individuals is the superstructure. Every true and real species begins by a creative fiat, back of which there is no species of this kind in existence. A true and real species cannot be accounted for by evolution because this implies existing substance to be evolved. But when the invisible specific substance has been originated from nonentity, it then develops. When God has made a vegetable species “before it was in the earth,” it then “yields seed after its kind.”

That the species contains all the individuals is proved by nonsexual propagation. In the lowest range of vegetable and animal life, propagation is without sex. The moner (cell) simply divides itself into two (fission); and these divide again, and so on indefinitely. Here the child is as old as the parent (Roget, Physiology 2.583). Again in the instance of propagation by buds (gemmation), the cell protrudes a part of itself. It buds. And this protruded part may exist either partially or entirely separate from the stock. In both fission and gemmation, there is no impregnation of egg by sperm, of female by male.

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

Sexual propagation, which is the usual method in the higher plants and animals, also proves that the species contains all the individuals. The two sexes may exist in one individual who is hermaphrodite or double-sexed. In most of the higher plants, every blossom contains both the male organs (the stamen and anther) and the female organs (the pistil and germ). The garden snail produces eggs in one part of the sexual gland and in another part sperm, but the conjunction of the two individuals is requisite to impregnation.

The majority of plants are hermaphrodites. Only a few, like the willow and poplar and some aquatic plants, propagate themselves by sex in two individuals. But in the animal world, the rule is the reverse. Propagation of a species, here, is by male and female individuals; and each successive pair is the offspring of a preceding pair and so backward until the very first primitive pair is reached. This primitive pair was a creation ex nihilo; and the Creator of the first pair created in and with them the invisible but real substance of all their posterity.

A species or specific nature then, though an invisible principle, is a real entity, not a mere idea. When God creates a primordial substance which is to be individualized by propagation, that which is created is not a mental abstraction or general term having no objective correspondent. A specific nature has a real existence, not a nominal.

The dispute between the realist and nominalist is easily settled if the parties distinguish carefully between specific and nonspecific substance or, in other words, between organic and inorganic substance. When specific or vital substance is in view, then realism is the truth; the species is a reality equally with the individuals that are produced out of it. Both species and individuals are entities. But when there is no species, when there is no vital specific substance out of which the individual is produced, then the only reality is the individual. “Species” in this case is employed in a nominal and improper sense. It is only an abstract term denoting a collection of individuals who are the only reality in the case.

Accordingly, the answer to the question between realism and nominalism—namely, whether a general conception has objective reality—depends upon the nature of the thing referred to. The dispute between the parties has overlooked this. In respect to certain things, the assertion of the nominalist is correct; in respect to certain others, the realist is correct. For example, the general conception of an inkstand has no objective correspondent because inkstands are not propagated from a specific substance or nature. They are inorganic, nonvital substance. They are not a species. They are only individuals. The only reality is the particular single inkstand. “Inkstand” as a general term is merely a name, not a thing. The assertion of the nominalist is correct here. The same is true of the crystal. There is no propagation of crystals from a common specific substance. The only reality here is the individual crystal. Again, there is no objective correspondent to such general terms as biped, quadruped, animal, vegetable, etc., because these denote classes or orders, not species; neither is there an objective correspondent to the general term state or nation: “Although we speak of communities as sentient beings; although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests, and passions; nothing really exists or feels but individuals” (Paley, Moral Philosophy 6.11). The individuals of a nation are not propagated out of the nation, but out of the race. There is no English or French propagation. Propagation is human, not national. Englishmen and Frenchmen are primarily the sons of Adam and only secondarily the sons of Alfred and