This is one of a number of articles bro John Carter refers to in "Sin, Sins and Sin-Offering" (The Christadelphian March 1938), which he in turn refers to in "The Christadelphian on the Nature of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ" (The Christadelphian May 1939). This was to re-affirm the position of The Christadelphian and the Central ecclesias on the nature of man and the sacrifice of Christ.

The Christadelphian July 1922, W. J. Young

“Original Sin in Jesus”

(The following remarks were written before W.J.Y. had seen brother Sulley’s postcript to the article on The Atonement in The Christadelphian for May (p. 199), and the editorial remarks on “This Corruptible” in the same issue (p. 221). He is inclined to think them superfluous now, but consents to our using them at discretion.—Ed., C.)

As I think personalities are always best avoided by people who have not the gift of the Holy Spirit, I will say nothing about “pedantic dogmatism” and certain other expressions, but try to give a brief reply to some of the things in brother Bell’s article.

What we Christadelphians call “pernicious teaching” in this matter is the teaching taught by brother Bell and those who agree with him, and which opposes that taught by Dr. Thomas and held by us ever since as to the human nature of Jesus. Brother Bell has no need to ask what the latter is; he exhibits it himself from Dr. Thomas, and tries to refute it. And Brother Bell will grant that from our point of view his own teaching is “pernicious.”

No, “simple Christadelphian believers” may not use a word in a certain particular sense in the New Testament against over-whelming reason to the contrary, even though one or two remote instances of such usage might be cited. It is by the application of such a principle that, for example, we know the Revisers to be wrong in giving in margin to Phil. 2:7, “Gk., being originally, ” when the word huparchon never has this rigid meaning in the New Testament, though such a use can be found in the older literature.

In Lev. 6:25 the word is not hamartia alone, as stated by brother Bell, but is “in the genitive with the article,” according to my statement in The Christadelphian (November, 1921).—(That is so, and tes hamartias is explained in the very same verse by the phrase ta peri tes humartias.—Ed., C.)—Brother Bell deduces from this verse that the authors of the LXX. were quite satisfied that hamartia alone could stand for “sin-offering.” One would think it obvious, rather, that if they had been so satisfied they would never have gone to the trouble to devise and fix upon a definite technical Greek phrase to render the Hebrew word when in their opinion is meant “sin-offering,” and not merely “sin.” Yet this is just what they do in this very verse, as elsewhere, rendering the Hebrew word by the phrase “the things concerning sin,” i.e., “the sin-offerings.” So that the very text cited by brother Bell is itself evident proof that to the writers of the LXX. hamartia alone was not adequate to stand for “sin-offering,” or the other phrase never would have been devised. Brother Bell’s deduction is therefore erroneous.

“The poor and the illiterate,” who have brother Bell’s sympathy, can rest quite content with the text of 2 Cor. 5:21 as it stands in A.V. and R.V. It is such as brother Bell himself who make things hard for them by altering the English translation of this passage without any justification whatever in order to support their theory. And when the rendering of our English version is thus challenged, it becomes evidently needful to protect the minds of “the poor and the illiterate,” and this I have tried to do.

Desiring me to explain something which he calls my “absurdity,” brother Bell says that I am “of course aware that ‘to be’ is an interpolation” in 2 Cor 5:21, ”and is not in the original.” I am “of course aware” of no such thing, and I will show why. The word “sin” in English is both substantive and verb, and in any given passage the only way of telling which meaning is intended is by the context. If Paul had written in English, “He made him sin for us,” no one could have told from this phrase alone whether he intended substantive or verb. But in the Greek it is not so, and there is no difficulty in knowing that in this particular passage he uses a substantive, hamartia. The translators were then under the necessity so to render the text as to make it clear that here “sin” is substantive and not verb; and the obvious way to do it, the simplest and best, and the one which was open to no sort of objection from anyone who knew any Greek, was to insert the words “to be, ” which are therefore latent in the original and absolutely necessary to its proper translation. These words are then no “interpolation” in the real sense of that term. If they had not been inserted someone might have been found to interpret the passage to mean “He made him to sin on our behalf”!

Once granted, as it must be granted or further argument is useless, that “made to be sin” is the necessary translation of the text, then, unless hamartia can be shown to bear the meaning “sin-offering” in Paul’s writings or in the rest of the New Testament—and it cannot be so shown—the meaning of the passage cannot be mistaken. It is, “He constituted him of sin-nature on our behalf.”

I don’t wonder that brother Bell wishes me to “leave grammar alone,” and to answer his questions. Thanks! As I have said before, I prefer my own method of dealing with heresy, and, so far as the teaching of Dr. Thomas and the belief of those who agree with Dr. Thomas is concerned, brother Bell will grant that his teaching is “heresy.”

Brother Bell says, “it is, perhaps, only fair to admit that ‘original sin’ was believed in by Dr. Thomas.” But why “perhaps only fair to admit” it? Would it not be monstrously unfair to deny it or to hide the fact, as indeed some do, apparently? And of course Dr. Thomas was “candid and fearless enough to explain what he meant by it.” Yes, he was, and we quote his fearless words and candidly proclaim our close adhesion to the truths he taught; not because he taught them, but because we believe them to be the teachings of the World of God.

And surely brother Bell ought to know enough about books to know that what may be on p. 116 of one edition is not necessarily to be found on the same page of a prior or of a subsequent one; and I named the edition from which I quoted (1903) in order to leave no doubt. Brother Bell’s suggestion of a printer’s error seems to me childish, as his implied suggestion that the passage may have been “doctored by amendment” is unworthy. But what brother Bell does bring out from the citation of his 1884 edition is that what Dr. Thomas taught therein then is what we hold to now, and what brother Bell opposes. There has been on this matter of expression of our doctrine no “doctoring by amendment,” as comparison of the passages in the different editions will prove.

And now brother Bell holds up Dr. Thomas against me when he quotes him as citing “He sent his own son . . . and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in the offering of his own body once.” He states that Dr. Thomas’ use of this passage is destructive of my contention. But in reply I bring against brother Bell the charge that in this matter he leaves out words which Dr. Thomas had carefully added, and which I believe overwhelmingly justify my claim to Dr. Thomas’ support. For Dr. Thomas adds, and I quote them in my brief article in The Christadelphian of November, 1921, as essential, “Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus, if it had not existed there.” But further, in the same section of Elpis Israel Dr. Thomas goes on to say—and I can assure brother Bell’s readers that Dr. Thomas’ words have not been “doctored by amendment” in subsequent editions, “His body was as unclean as the bodies of those for whom he died . . . the purpose of God; which was to condemn sin in the flesh; a thing that could not have been accomplished if there were no sin there.”

But at least we now know where we are. We stand in this matter exactly where Dr. Thomas stood, and hold fast the same form of sound words to this day. Brother Bell says that both Dr. Thomas and ourselves are wrong. The change, then, is in brother Bell, not in us. It is not this brother, or that, or any other who is responsible for our position in respect to this doctrine, as brother Bell’s language would seem to indicate. We abide in the teaching as we received it and tested it and proved it good, and so we shall abide, and our position is not jeopardised, as is that of brother Bell, by a particular translation of a particular word in a particular passage, and there is no need for me here and now to concern myself in defending anew this doctrine of “sin in the flesh.” We do not need “thrice to fight our battle o’er, and thrice to slay the slain.”

But with regard to this verse of 2 Cor. 5:21, the truth remains as ever, that it cannot be rendered “made to be a sin-offering” without doing violence to the meaning of the word hamartia and forcing upon it a meaning that it will not bear. Incidentally, that monumental work, Liddell and Scott’s great Greek Lexicon, both in its earlier and in its latest editions, knows nothing of such a meaning as “sin-offering” for hamartia. If not sufficient for “any that seem to be contentious,” this should be good enough guide for “the poor and illiterate”!

Commenting on between four and five pages of railing comment in The Shield for April, W.J.Y. continues:—

I have just got another Shield for April 15th, 1922.

In this brother Bell leads off with his usual gird at the poor editor of The Christadelphian—long-suffering man!

But in among much of this talk it is worth while to note carefully what he says on p. 64, bottom line: “Sinful flesh means flesh that sins.” He doesn’t say, as he ought, “This is my definition, the definition of brother Bell.” Yet in next column he says, “His flesh was the same kind of flesh which Paul calls ‘sinful,’ Because of its Proclivities”! Despite this he did no sin. “He was never sinful.” Here is the very truth we proclaim, the truth which brother Bell in his stumbling has stumbled upon without realising its force and its application.

Then in next paragraph he adds, “Despite his sinful flesh tendencies, he rose superior and conquered them by his abstinence . . . His was a triumph of obedience over desire.” Here is the truth, naked and unashamed, but again not really recognised in its import by the writer.

His statement in same paragraph, “He succeeded when Adam fell,” is true, but inadequate. Adam’s flesh was very good; it was not originally sinful in any sense; it had no sinful “proclivities” or “tendencies.” Had such been the case, an outside temptation would have been wholly unnecessary. Dr. Thomas puts it admirably when he says, “Man’s defilement was first a matter of conscience, and then corporeal.” The difference is shown in the case of Cain: he needed no external temptation to assault his brother. Jesus was “tempted in all points like as we are,” i.e., by internal “proclivities” and external circumstances and agencies. His success, then, was immeasurably greater than Adam’s would have been had Adam succeeded, since his task was immeasurably greater. How great we can gain an inkling from the fact that on the basis of this success his offering is efficacious to “take away the sin of the world.”

But I doubt if brother Bell will ever learn. He is too anxious to teach.

W. J. Y.

We add just a word or two in response to the “impeachment” of The Shield for April. The words printed in Clarendon type on page 61, “Jesus was as unclean as those he died for,” are a perversion of the words of Dr. Thomas in Elpis Israel, p. 116 (edition 1903): “His body was as unclean as the bodies of those for whom he died; for he was born of a woman, and ‘not one’ can bring a clean body out of a defiled body; for ‘that,’ says Jesus himself, ‘which is born of the flesh is flesh.’”

It was left to Pope Pius IX. to get over this difficulty—by promulgating on the 8th December, 1854, the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary as a doctrine of the Church. But we hesitate to tax brother Bell with the acceptance of this attempted solution. Nevertheless the similarity of his strenuous objections to what he calls “a defiled Christ,” to the Papal doctrines is challenging. He used years ago to print and publish the formula “undefiled in every sense” with reference to Christ, in which case Christ could certainly have no sympathy with “this corruptible.” Since brother Bell sometimes speaks the truth on this matter, and sometimes falsehood, we cannot well make out which predominates in his mind. He truly says, for instance, on page 62, that “the character of Christ” is allowed by the Christadelphian to be “immaculate.” And the next words following are these: “If such be permitted, then again it indubitably follows that his body was in keeping with his character.” Does this mean that his body was “immaculate”? If so, how could he be “this corruptible” and “die unto sin once”? And from what did he need saving?

As to Dr. Dollinger, is truth less truth because it emanates from a Roman Catholic? Brother Bell does not appear to be aware that Dr. Dollinger was a liberal Catholic who was so much opposed to Pius IX. and his dogmas that he was excommunicated in 1871. Dr. Thomas and Dr. Dollinger agree as to the lineal transmission of sin in human nature. It is brother Bell who is on the side of the Pope and his so-called “immaculate” flesh. Let those who will, espouse this doctrine in fellowship. The Christadelphian, in present hands, will have none of it.—Ed.