The Christadelphian, May 1932, C. C. Walker

“Adam in His Novitiate” 

I.S. writes:—

“In my reading of Elpis Israel, about page 65, reading of man during his novitiate, the doctor says: ‘We may therefore admit man’s corruptibility, and consequently his mortality, without saying he is mortal,’ and continuing he says, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of our Lord, shall be changed, therefore we are not mortal (? immortal). I shall be much obliged if you will assist me through the magazine.”

We fear we cannot help much in this matter. As to the general sense of the last three paragraphs of Chapter II. it is quite excellent. But as to the particular expression cited by our brother it is to us a contradiction in terms. We hold by Paul’s use of the phrases “this corruptible” and “this mortal” in 1 Cor. 15:53, Adam was not in this estate before sin. And Dr. Thomas in the paragraphs alluded to makes this quite plain. “In the Paradise of Eden, mortality and immortality were set before man and his companion. They were external to them.” We believe this. Let it rest at that.

The Christadelphian, June 1932, C. C. Walker

Referring to p. 220 of our May issue, brother J. C. Mullen writes:—

Your correspondent, I.S., in the May Christadelphian, is evidently perplexed over what Dr. Thomas wrote in Elpis Israel concerning “man in his novitiate.” If I.S. has access to a later work of the Doctor’s, namely, The Herald of the Kingdom, 1855, page 160, also Herald, 1858, pages 87, 88, he will have no difficulty in understanding the Doctor’s teaching on the subject.

In the 1855 Herald is an article entitled “Our Terrestrial System before the Fall,” from which I will quote:—

“There was no miracle wrought in executing the sentence under which Adam and Eve placed themselves . . . We dissent from our correspondent’s ‘notion’ that all creation became corrupt (by which we understand him to mean constitutionally impregnated with corruptibility) at the fall. We believe that the change consequent upon that calamity was moral, not physical. The natural system was the same the day before the fall as the day after.”

These articles were written five and eight years, respectively, after Elpis Israel was first published.

Answer.—We have looked up and re-read the articles in question; but they do not help us much. As with Elpis Israel so with these articles, we esteem the general thesis to be sound, but cannot fall in with particular expressions. (The subject is a very thorny one.) “There was no miracle wrought”—Who can say authoritatively that this is so? “The change . . . was moral, not physical . . .” Whence then came death?

As it happens we are just reprinting Catechesis by Dr. Thomas. Here are a few lines:—

37.—What relation did the first man sustain to mortality and immortality?

Answer.—That of a candidate for the one or the other. If obedient to the law, he would obtain the right to eat of the tree of life and live for ever (Gen. 3:22; Rev. 22:14); if disobedient, he would incur the penalty of the law, which consigned him to the dust from which he was taken (Gen. 2:17: 3:19).

38.—Having come under the penalty of the law, when did it begin to take effect?

Answer.—After he had given account of himself at the judgment which sat upon his case, and sentence of death was pronounced upon him.

This is about all that can usefully be said on the matter.

In the Constitution of the Birmingham Ecclesia, Clause V., we read:—

V.—That Adam broke this law, and was adjudged unworthy of immortality, and sentenced to return to the ground from whence he was taken—a sentence which defiled and became a physical law of his being, and was transmitted to all his posterity (Gen. 3:15–19, 22–23; 2 Cor. 1:9; Rome. 7:24; 2 Cor. 5:2–4; Rom. 7:18–23; Gal. 5:16–17; Rom. 6:12: 7:21; John 3:6; Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:32; Ps. 51:5; Job 14:4).

The late John Bell ridiculed this, and asked how a sentence could so defile? “How can the mind conceive of a defiled nature?” “Our nature is as God made it”!

Yet all the time there were in the Bible the records of cases in which sentences of God immediately defiled physically those who were affected thereby. “Moses’ hand for “a sign” became leprous (Ex. 4:6–8); Miriam was smitten with leprosy and was excommunicated for a week (Num. 12:10–15); “Remember Miriam”! said Moses (Deut. 24:9). Gehazi was smitten with leprosy (2 Kings 5.); and Uzziah similarly was smitten by God, and was “a leper unto the day of his death” (2 Kings 15:5; 2 Chron. 26:16–21). These were “sentences which defiled,” and became, for a greater or less length of time, “a physical law of the being” of the sentenced persons. On the other hand, our Lord healed lepers with a word.

Our natural philosophers of the present day, with their splitting of the “unsplittables” (for that is what the word “atom” radically means) are becoming exceedingly conservative over their definition of “matter” and “mind,” “moral” and “physical,” and so forth. They gravitate towards the Bible doctrine that the basis of all things is “Spirit.”

A sister, having read the “Answers” in last issue, remarks:—

“I observe a correspondent has referred to Dr. Thomas’s words relative to the condition of Adam in his novitiate. The particular expression cited rather puzzled me in my reading of it a few weeks ago, but I am satisfied that it was a condition of neutrality, answerable to the pronouncement, “Very Good,” and capable of development into either mortality or immortality. There are some things we must “leave at that,” because now “we see through a glass darkly,” but then “we shall know even as we are known.”

“What a delightful prospect the latter condition is, and how much worth “enduring unto the end.” We think and hope that “end” will soon be here, in person to effect the consummation of the whole beautiful Bible plan, even Jesus Christ our loved Lord.”