A few years ago I led my adult Sunday School through Chosen by God by R. C. Sproul. I was actually converted to “calvinism” by his book, The Holiness of God. However, since that book was not, as far as I can tell, intended to bring about such conversion, I’ve always given Chosen first place in my choice of introductory books. If you want to smash someone in the head with the sheer number of Biblical prooftexts, then you might go with Arthur Pink’s The Sovereignty of God (the other book that I read early enough to be highly affected by), but for persuasion, I think Sproul still has the most accessible book on the market.
Anyway, this time through I noticed something on the chapter on original sin (4). First, Sproul deals with the “mythical view” of the Fall (which would equally apply to pelagian views–i.e. not only those who don’t think it really happened, but also those who don’t think it was our fall as well). He points out that the mythical view cannot account for the world as we know it. If everyone is morally free to not sin (everyone is physically free, of course) then some number of people among the billions who presently exists would never have fallen into sin.
Sproul deals with some objections that might arise to his reasoning and makes what I think is a solid case.
But later Sproul says something quite different in explaining why the federal view is morally acceptable. He states that Adam sinned as our representative so that his sin is accounted to us and we are justly held guilty for what he did. This would be considered unfair, at first, because we never had a chance to choose Adam to be our representative. But Sproul replies that we often make mistakes in choosing a representative and pick one who doesn’t really represent us. God is faithful and omniscient and we can trust him to have chosen our representative in an infallibly accurate was.
He writes that each one of us would have done what Adam did if we had been there instead of him.
But this presents a problem, because according to this explanation, there is no need for the doctrine of Original Sin to explain why we are all sinners. We would all choose to sin anyway, even if we were unfallen originally and placed in the Garden.
These sorts of issues were behind my award-winning paper, “Real Union or Legal Fiction? John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy With Charles Hodge Over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin (with a Comparison to Robert L. Dabney).” I was reminded of it later, seeing the lead essay at PCANEWS by Michael Horton, “What Is The Reformed Faith?” (It is now at the RUF website). The article leads off with this line:
How do I go to God?”, someone asked the Scottish Presbyterian, Horatius Bonar. The parson answered, “It is with our sins that we go to God, for we have nothing else that we can truly call our own.”
But that’s the problem I think with the way I hear the federal view argued. The parallelism insisted upon between the imputation of Adam’s sin and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness would demand that they both be our own, or else that they both be alien.
In other words, if the imputations are too parallel, then we get into difficulties. If we are, rightly, told we must blame ourselves for our sin and not blame another, then we must also take credit in our status in Christ as if it was not a gift. On the other hand, if we are, rightly, told we must thank God for being reckoned with the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ, then we may deny responsibility for our sin in Adam and blame him for it.
Obviously, we must both blame ourselves for our sinful status and thank God in Christ alone for our right standing before him. While Adam is the originator of our guilt and sin, he has done so in a way that is “deeper” to our very selves then the salvation that is in Jesus. If this seems like a slur on the grace of Christ, then you are misunderstanding. It is a more glorious thing for God to be praised by forgiven, sanctified, sinners whom Christ rescued from Adam’s Fall, then to be praised by some new race that were never permitted to be guilty whom Christ somehow created. Jesus didn’t want to literally start a new race, but to make guilty sinners into a new, righteous, race.
In my view, it is a mistake to think that God can not allow a human being to be conceived as sinful unless he already regards him as guilty and thus punishes him with a corrupt nature. There is no point in time in which an offspring of Adam is not already corrupt. Federalists rightly criticize realists for positing a pre-existence on the part of individuals. But some popularized forms of Federalism itself demand pre-existence as well. Somehow one is first held as guilty and then brought into existence and concieved. The prominant view that “each individual sinner of us had a federal existence before we were conceived; that we bore a covenanted or legal relation before we existed,” writes Dabney, “is incorrect” if “this language means anything more than a reference to foreordination and foreknowledge.” On the contrary,
There is, then, no moral nature of the first Adam to which we can be naturally united save his fallen nature. To this emphatically agree the Scriptures. Gen. v. 3: “And Adam . . . . begat a son in his own likeness, after his image and called his name Seth.” 1 Cor. xv. 48, 49: “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy . . . And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” “Put off . . . the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, . . . . and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” (Eph. iv. 22-24.) These words, in requiring conversion, allude to the two unions; the first, corrupt; the second, holy. (Compare Col. iii. 9, 10.)
To Dabney it is obvious that a person cannot be guilty if he does not exist. God may plan to bring a person into existence, and that person may be guilty, but it is incoherent to talk of our guilt before we were conceived.
Let the clear, convincing language of the Confession of Faith, touching the counterpart subject of justification, illustrate this statement. Chap. XI., Sec. 4: “God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless they are not justified until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them.” By parity of reasoning, we hold that God did, from all eternity, decree to condemn all men descended from Adam by ordinary generation; and that Adam did, some time after his creation in holiness, sin and fall for them as well as for himself; nevertheless, individual fallen men are not condemned in him until such time as their existence doth actually unite them to Adam. And then it is a corrupted Adam to whom they are united.
Notice how this solves the problem that R. C. Sproul faces. If Adam had been confirmed in righteousness by the Covenant of Works then his offspring would have been so conceived and born. He would have represented them accurately. Likewise, when Adam sinned, he became corrupt and had only a corrupt nature to bring about children. Again, he is the accurate representative. Federalism works as an explanation that morally justifies God, holds humans accountable, and glorifies God in salvation, as well as deals with all the exegetical data.
The mistake that trips people up is the claim that it would be unfair for God to bring a sinful creature into existence. It is true that it would be inconsistent with God’s character to do so. But God covenanted with Adam as a creation partner. From that point onward, God would no longer directly create individuals, but rather create new humans through the humanity of Adam and Eve. If they were fallen, that does not impinge on the goodness of God’s gift of life.
On the other hand, people act like a morally corrupt creature would have some just accusation against God, “Why did you make me like this?” Unless God can say, “Because you were already guilty,” then he has a case. But that is simply untrue. A morally corrupt creature is (as Sproul explains quite well) still responsible for his actions. His actions spring from himself. He has no one else to blame. This is mysterious and hard to swallow, but it is simply inescapable if free will involves a person choosing. God has not robbed anyone of moral uprightness because there was no microsecond of uprightness possessed by the creature that could be taken from him. He was spontaneously sinful from the moment he existed. Every creature conceived morally corrupt freely agrees with that corruption–and thus, in the actual case of humans, agrees with Adam’s rebellion.
(Sidenote: If Adam had not sinned, you would not exist. Some other group of humans would exist at this point in time. To wish for the Fall to have never happened is to wish that you would never be. If you change the past then history changes, different people get married and different individuals are born to them. Your personal status as sinner or sinless was not hanging in the balance in the Garden, but rather what was at issue is whether or not you would ever be born, or your parents, etc.)
Thus, the sinfulness of our estate in Adam, both in guilt and corruption, is deeper to our identity than our righteousness in Christ, because Adam is basic to our very existence and Christ intervenes. This does not mean a less than total redemption (and I’m open to better ways of expressing what I am trying to say). What it means is that we must own our sin and guilt in Adam, but we must be grateful for our sanctification and justification in Christ coming to us from outside ourselves.