The Christadelphian, August 1956, John Carter

“Jargon and Sound Speech”

Hacknyed phrases can be the bane of clear thinking: for example “Adamic Condemnation” and “Original Sin” have bemused thought both in Christendom and in our own body. Augustine bears much responsibility for the teaching that the guilt of Adam’s sin was inherited by all his descendants. Since Augustine also believed in the immortality of the soul (and was indeed largely responsible for it becoming an accepted doctrine in Christendom), and since the “hereditary curse” precluded infants from salvation, he faced the unwelcome problem of the fate of the souls of infants. Later generations have been saddled with the same problem. There appears no escape from the conclusion that to get rid of the doctrine of endless torments for innocent children, either the doctrine of the immortality of the soul or of “original sin” must be discarded. Yet the two doctrines are tied together. Both, however, are unscriptural, and the problem is of man’s own making.

But the doctrine of “inherited guilt” has appeared again and again in the disputations connected with the Truth, sometimes somewhat disguised, but at other times clearly taught. Now from the Antipodes we are getting such expressions as “inherited sin”; that “at birth the relationship (of Jesus) to God was no different from that of other descendants of Adam who ‘by nature’ are ‘children of wrath’”;1 “that the ‘flesh’ is a barrier to reconciliation”; ‘a state of estrangement ‘by nature’”; that “Jesus had to be ritually purged from inherited sin” by circumcision; “alienation through condemnation in Adam”.

There was a spate of this language in the 1890s; and The Christadelphian has frequent comments correcting the ideas behind such words. We reprint a few selections, and commend them for their scriptural, refreshing good sense. All are from the pen of bro. Roberts.

“No Condemnation”

Some contend that the “no condemnation” spoken of refers to “Adamic condemnation”, and is a present actual freedom. If this is correct, baptism ought to cure our mortal nature, for our mortal nature is the one thing we have inherited from Adam, and the one thing that remains unchanged by the gospel. There is no change effected by the gospel except a change in our relation to God; whereas before time we were alienated from him by wicked works, we are now reconciled; whereas we were dead in trespasses and sins, our sins are now all forgiven; whereas we were the children of wrath, we have become objects of his favour; whereas we were strangers and foreigners, we are now children. There is a present freedom, certainly, but not from the death inherited from Adam; for that will as assuredly send us into the grave, if the Lord delay his coming, as if we had never heard of the gospel. The freedom we have, is freedom from our sins, as obstacles to a future life, and from our alienship as an obstacle to future incorporation in the glorified house of God. With this, Adam had nothing to do. From the death that came by Adam we are being slowly delivered by a process that does not end till the change to the incorruptible. It begins when we hear the gospel, but it is not complete without a variety of other steps. It is not complete without the baptism that must follow the hearing. It makes a step forward with baptism, but is not complete without that patient continuance in well-doing for which scope is afforded during the mortal life to follow; and even when that patient continuance in well doing is finished, the process of deliverance still waits completion, for we go into the grave and would never more be heard of if we did not rise. Even when we rise, the process of deliverance requires the judgment-seat to put on the finishing touch. To ignore this progressive nature of the process of deliverance must necessarily lead to endless mistakes

(1894, page 71).

“Imputed Disobedience”—a Fallacy

That we do not pass entirely out of Adam into Christ at baptism is a self-evident fact when two things are realized: our physical connection with Adam: the physical nature of Christ. The Christ we are baptized unto is a glorified Christ: baptism does not give us his glory, yet will lead to our getting it. The nature we have received from Adam is a mortal nature: baptism does not deliver us from this nature, yet it will lead to our being delivered. These are themselves “first principles” and not statements “seriously affecting first principles”.

As to the charge of believing “that the disobedience of Adam is not imputed to his descendants”, we own to it. To believe anything else would be to prove Christ a sinner, for he was one of those descendants. And it would be to contradict what God has declared as a principle regulating His procedure towards men, that “The soul that sinneth, it shall die . . . the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him”; “Every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Ezek. 18:4; Deut. 24:16). Adam sinned and was sentenced to death: and we inherit the nature on which that sentence took effect. But this is a different thing from God imputing Adam’s sin to us. It is testified that “God will not do iniquity”. He strongly appeals to Israel on this point all through Ezekiel 18. What should we think of holding a man guilty of an offence he had never committed? The consequence of another man’s sin may come upon him—such as where the son of a spendthrift who has wasted an estate is born into a state of poverty: but who would dream of “imputing” the spendthriftness of the father to the son? “By one man’s disobedience many have (truly) been made sinners”—not “at birth”, as the circular says, and which the Scriptures never say. They become sinners when they are capable of responsible action, and this being the result of the “nature” they have received from Adam, is traceable to “one man’s disobedience”. But this is a different thing from holding them to be sinners before they have sinned, and especially for a sin they never sinned—even Adam’s sin—which Paul expressly recognizes they are not guilty of (of course) in saying, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Rom. 5:14). The idea of imputing the sin of Adam to helpless babes is one of the old monstrosities of Papalized theology, from which we have become emancipated. We are not going back to that suffocating smoke.

(1894, page 241)

“Children of Wrath”

The emphasis of Paul’s description of the Ephesians as at one time “children of wrath” lies—not in the relations that governed their natural birth, but in the principles bearing on them in the lives they lived since that time. A glance at his words will show this, Ye “were dead in trespasses and sins (this is not affirmable of babes, who have not yet transgressed): wherein (that is, in trespasses and sins), ye walked according to the course of this world (this is a line of conduct, and babes are not capable of any line of conduct), according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all (Paul also, whom some doctrines of circumcision would exclude) had our conversation in time past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others”, that is, were in conduct and behaviour, the children of wrath, being of this behaviour by reason of what our nature is; for human nature, left to itself, is dark and disobedient—“enmity against God, not subject to the law of God”, as Paul says in Rom. 8:7. The wrath is against the unrighteousness of men and not against the helplessness of babes, who are born into a state of evil by reason of the law established in Adam’s person, and transmitted to them.

(1894, page 274)

The Grounds of “Wrath”

Bro. Andrew’s vague technicalities are responsible for some things which he now uses as stumbling blocks, “alienation” and “anger” for example, as applied to babes. “Alienated by wicked works”, or “alienated through ignorance”, is the style of the apostolic usage where that phrase is concerned, and I naturally could not allow that such a definition could be applicable to a babe who had and could do no wicked works. But I did not therefore mean that a babe does not inherit the sentence of death from Adam, or that it is not made of that sinful flesh whose motions Paul himself found so troublesome, and which is the common stock of hereditary human nature. Let the several parts of truth be allowed for, and there will be no ground for the laboured effort made by brother Andrew to try and make out contradiction where there is none. I have never contended or said that “Adam’s descendants do not come under condemnation until they individually commit sin”. They inherit the sentence of death passed upon Adam, and are in that sense “condemned already”; but this is an affair of physical inheritance; an affair of nature made mortal by condemnation. The sentence was passed upon Adam, “Because thou has done this, thou shalt return to dust”. The sentence becomes ours in this way, that under the sentence, Adam’s body (which was Adam) became mortal, and every body derived from Adam was necessarily mortal, too, and from the same cause, and therefore “death reigned” over them all. In this there is nothing difficult to understand. The difficulty begins when unscriptural statements are made and ideas imported into the situation that stultify reason, such as being “held guilty of Adam’s sin”, “Adam’s sin imputed to his posterity”, “children of wrath at birth”, etc. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven “against all unrighteousness of men” and not against misfortune.

(1894, page 439).

“Mechanical Terms”

Most controversies originate in the use of terms that are elastic from their vagueness. There are terms that are suitable enough as the casual description of some passing phase of truth, but which become sources of confusion when used as a precise and leading term of definition. Technicalities, also, that are serviceable enough when they represent an understood and accepted meaning, become causes of mere bewilderment if used for demonstration in controversy. In all controversy ideas ought to be expressed in the language of literal precision. When they cannot be so expressed in a case of dispute, and when, instead of literal definition, technicalities are pressed forward in the argument, it is the indication of a mental vacuum in that case, and a cause of mere jangle to disputants. There is much of this in brother Andrew’s writing. The mind is wearied and distressed by a mechanical use of Bible terms. The mind cannot be satisfied with words when they fail to convey ideas.

(1894, page 440).

1 The error here is in the wrong application of “by nature” and “children of wrath”. Jesus did no sin; he grew in wisdom, and in favour with God and man. He was never alienated from God, for he always did those things that pleased God.