The Christadelphian December 1894, Robert Roberts

“Has The “Christadelphian: Changed?”

A lengthy and excellent article has been sent to us, which deals with this question. It effectually rebuts the accusation that has been made, that the Christadelphian has changed its teaching concerning man’s relation to the sin of Adam and Christ’s relation to both. It does so by setting forth a series of extracts, in which the doctrines are avowed that are now seized upon as evidence that the Christadelphian has changed. It also makes other quotations to show that the change is in those who make the accusation.

We have only space this month for a few extracts. We may quote further another time over the signature “P. R.”

Extracts

“Is Adam’s sin imputed to his descendants, and are infants objects of God’s wrath?”—The Christadelphian of bygone days is said to have answered these questions in the affirmative, and to have given a different answer now to suit a new contention. Let the following sentences, written by brother Roberts twenty years ago, decide. I do not need to explain them. They might almost have been written to meet the present contention. Question: “Was Jesus born under condemnation?”

Answer.—“In the scriptural sense of hereditary condemnation, the answer is yes; but this requires to be fenced against the misunderstanding natural to the terms employed. Condemnation in its individual application implies displeasure, which cannot be affirmed of Jesus, who was the beloved of the Father. But no one is born under condemnation in its individual application. That is, no one is condemned as an individual until his actions as an individual call for it. But hereditary condemnation is not a matter of displeasure, but of misfortune. The displeasure or wrath arises afterwards when the men so born work unrighteousness. This unrighteousness they doubtless work ‘by nature,’ and are therefore ‘by nature children of wrath’—that is, by nature they are such as evoke wrath by unrighteousness. It was here that Jesus differed from all men. Though born under the hereditary law of mortality as his mission required, his relation to the Father as the Son of God exempted him from the uncontrolled subjection to unrighteousness.” — Christadelphian, 1874, page 526.

It must be obvious to everyone that this is the very teaching which is now impugned as heretical. In an article entitled “Adam’s sin and condemnation” by brother Andrew, appearing in the 1876 Christadelphian, page 57, the idea of the imputation of Adam’s moral guilt to his descendants is emphatically denied, and it is stated (page 51) that Adam’s sin “simply transmitted to them those consequences which it had brought upon himself, viz., knowledge of good and evil, disease, toil, sorrow, and death.”

The Renunciationists advocated the idea of Adam’s sin being imputed to his descendants, and they quoted Romans 8:1, applying it to Adam’s condemnation, omitting (as brother Andrew does) the words “who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.” (See a leaflet entitled “An end to Controversy”).

The doctrine now advocated by brother Andrew was not only the doctrines of the Renunciationists, but was, and is to this day, the teaching of the Church of England. It holds that “all infants born into this world deserve God’s wrath and damnation.” The nature of the damnation makes no difference to the bearing of the idea. Dr. Thomas satirised it in Eureka vol. 1, page 444, and also the idea of baptism being to remove this wrath. In summarising the faith of the Sardian state, he says they believed among other things “That infants were damned for a sin committed by Adam over four thousand years before.” “That immersion and grace in the case of infants was not for remission of their own sins but for that of another—of Adam’s. Hence Adam must have been pardoned every time an infant was dipped and regenerated by ‘grace’!”

What would the Doctor have thought had he been told that the same idea would be advocated twenty-three years after his death by men professing the truth? He left us in no doubt as to his understanding of the matter. In Clerical Theology Unscriptural, Heresian having made some remarks concerning original sin being sufficient to sink the infant soul, Boanerges (who personated the Doctor) replies, “O fie, Heresian, I thought you had more sense than that; you do not know what sin is. . . . . You ought to know that the primitive sense of the word is the ‘transgression of the law’ and the derived sense that of evil in the flesh. Transgression is to this evil as cause to an effect, which effect reacts in the posterity of the original transgressors as a cause, which uncontrolled by belief of the truth evolves transgression in addition to those natural ills, disease, death and corruption, which are inherent in flesh and blood. Because he transgressed the Eden law, Adam is said to have sinned. Evil was then evolved in his flesh as the punishment of sin, and because the evil was the punishment of the sin, it is also styled sin. Flesh and blood is naturally and hereditarily full of this evil. It is therefore styled sinful flesh, or flesh full of sin.”

Later on he explains that “Adam’s offence entailed upon us subjection to vanity (Rom. 8:20) or to the ills that flesh inherits, in the present state, which are terminated by death and corruption. . . . Infants die because they are born of mortal flesh, and not because they have sinned, or are responsible for Adam’s sin. If this were remitted at baptism, they ought not to die, for when God remits sin He also remits the punishment or consequence it entails.”

These quotations show that the change is wholly on the side of the new doctrine, and not with those who are resisting it. The attempt to prove it otherwise is on a par with the effort made by the Renunciationists in the same direction. To say that Dr. Thomas and brother Roberts may have been wrong in past teaching would be a fair suggestion. But to say that the Christadelphian has changed in now teaching what it has taught continuously for 20 years past is something out of the category of fair play.

We read also that sin is not imputed where there is no law. If so, it is strange to read “that Adam’s sin is imputed to his descendants,” who are without law, and still more, that they are objects of God’s wrath on account of it.

The most outrageous statement which has been made is the one that men are objects of divine anger because they are flesh, and that the denial of this “is, with the exception of the free-life theory, substantially the same as the Renunciationist theory of 20 years ago.” It seems to me that the writer of such statements has entirely forgotten what the Renunciationist contention was. The Renunciationists maintained—

1. That all men were objects of God’s wrath because of Adam’s sin, and that the death which came by Adam was eternal death.

2. That no man was able to redeem his brother not because all sinned personally, but because all were held guilty of Adam’s sin.

3. That the law was ordained only to the present life, and that the flesh which was “weak” (Rom. 8:3) was that of the animal sacrifices.

4. That consequently had Jesus been under the Adamic condemnation, he would have been a sinner and never could be raised, and that although God “might have pitied he could not save” in harmony with His law.

5. Ergo (argued they) Jesus was born with a free life.

This, it is now stated, is substantially the same as the view contended for by those who oppose brother Andrew, namely, that we are “made subject to vanity,” and that the “displeasure or wrath arises afterwards because of our sins.” These last words, so exactly expressing our present idea, were written by the editor of the Christadelphian in 1874, when the Renunciationist controversy was still agitating the brethren’s minds, and in response to a question evidently arising out of that contention. It is therefore manifest what an awful misrepresentation the statement in question is.

If in 1873–4 had it been admitted that men were objects of God’s wrath on account of Adam’s sin, it would have been almost impossible to repel the Renunciationist contention. It would have pointed out that according to such an idea Jesus, if he were born under the Adamic condemnation, was an object of God’s wrath, whereas, before his sacrifice, God said, “This is my beloved Son.” I put this difficulty before an advocate of the new theory, and he said that Jesus would be really an object of God’s wrath until his sacrificial death, only the wrath was removed in a temporary manner by circumcision!

What a dreadfully mechanical theory it is. That God interfered and specially produced from the Adamic race one who was to work out His purpose, and yet was angry with the babe thus born because Adam sinned four thousand years before, and that the cutting off of a piece of human flesh removed that wrath for a time! Dr. Thomas said, if at baptism Adam’s sin were remitted, the consequence would be remitted, and people ought not to die. “Now Jesus had no offences to suffer for; he was without sin. For himself it was unnecessary that he should have been nailed to the tree, except as part of the obedience the Father required at his hands; it was ‘for us’ that he was thus slain.” The new theory would condemn this as a departure from what was taught during the renunciationist controversy. Unfortunately, however, for those who wish to regard the Christadelphian as having changed, the paragraph is taken word for word from the Christadelphian for 1873 (page 554), just in the heat of that very controversy, and it is quoted by the editor the next year to elucidate a point which had arisen.

Of course the very obedience which Jesus yielded to the Father brought him under the curse of the law, but that was brought about by his mission and would not have been the case apart from the work which he had to accomplish.

It is but right to add that brother Roberts at that time, no less than now, strongly objected to in any way separating Jesus from his mission, and he only yielded to make more clear a feature which to some was rather obscure. He says, 1873, page 554, “If it were lawful at all consider his case separately from those he came to redeem, we might say that where all others, from the weakness of the flesh, found the law to be unto death (Rom. 7:10; 8:3), Jesus would have found it unto life in his resurrection, when the life of this mortal had with him terminated.” It is said that this teaching involves the idea of substitution. There is absolutely no ground for such a charge. It is simply a reckless, or at least unconsidered, assertion.

The truth is simple, and can be understood by “whosoever will.” The matter is beautifully put forward in Elpis Israel written just as the truth had come to light in this 19th century.

On page 149 we find these words (the italics are the author’s). *

“The elementary doctrinal principles of religion are few and simple, and no other reason can be given for them than that God wills them. They may be thus stated:—

(a)“No sinner can by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him.”

(b)“Sin cannot be covered or remitted without the shedding of blood.”

(c)“The blood of animals cannot take away sin.”

(d)“Sin must be condemned in sinful flesh innocent of transgression.”

(e)“Sins must be covered by a garment derived from the purification sacrifice made living by a resurrection.”

Here indeed we have the simplicity as it is in Jesus.

P. R.

• Elpis Israel end of chapter 5.