- The second part, printed last month, of this Theological Conference paper, dealt with the third section: The Fall itself and what was involved. This is the final article in the series.
(4.) The Consequences for the Human Race.
Let us recall the answer to Question 19 in The Shorter Catechism: “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever”. The words, all mankind, are significant; they mean the whole of the human race, from Adam onwards, are involved in this event – all of his descendants in every age and generation. This takes in the federal headship, imputation of sin and the solidarity of the race. It should be noted that this particular aspect of the subject would require a separate paper to do it justice.
The following points are from John Murray’s book on Imputation:
(a) The Federal Headship of the Race.
God constituted Adam the head of the human race. Paul consistently makes the contrast in Scripture between Adam and Christ as the legal representatives of the race. The first Adam was the natural head of the whole human race, not just naturally but federally – within the covenant of works. Each of us is therefore a party in the covenant of works. We sinned in Adam, and so we fell with him in his first transgression. While Adam was the root of all mankind, his federal headship rests solely on God’s sovereign appointment.
(b) Imputation.
This is a legal term. It describes the reckoning of Adam’s first sin to his posterity. They “sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression”. By one man’s disobedience the many were constituted sinners (Rom 5:19). “In Adam all die” (1 Cor 15:22).
Robert Shaw states that the Confession points out “the consequences of the sin of our first parents in regard to their posterity. These consequences are restricted to those ‘descending from them by ordinary generation’. This restriction is obviously introduced in order to exclude our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as man, was one of the posterity of Adam, but did not descend from him by ordinary generation. . . . But the effects of Adam’s first transgression extend to all his natural posterity; and, according to our Confession, the guilt of this sin is imputed, and a corrupt nature is conveyed, to them. This is what is commonly called original sin. Though that phrase is often restricted to the corruption of nature derived to us from Adam, yet, in its proper latitude, it includes also the imputation of guilt.
“The doctrine of original sin was universally received by the Church of God until the beginning of the fifth century, when it was denied by Pelagius. He maintained ‘that the sins of our first parents were imputed to them alone, and not to their posterity; that we derive no corruption from their fall, but are born as pure and unspotted as Adam came out of the forming hand of his Creator’. . . .
“Another branch of original sin is the imputation of the guilt of Adam’s first transgression. This is rejected by many who admit original corruption. By the imputation of Adam’s first sin, it is not intended that his personal transgression becomes the personal transgression of his posterity; but that the guilt of his transgression is reckoned to their account. And it is only the guilt of his first sin, which was committed by him as a public representative, that is imputed to his posterity, and not the guilt of his future sins, after he had ceased to act in that character. . . .
“We do not see how the universal corruption of mankind can be accounted for, without admitting that they are involved in the guilt of his first transgression. It must be some sin which God punishes with the deprivation of original righteousness; and that can be no other than the first sin of Adam. The doctrine of imputation is clearly taught in Scripture; particularly in Romans 5 it is so plainly stated, so often repeated, and so formally proved, that it must be acknowledged to be the doctrine of the apostle. In support of this doctrine, we might appeal to the universality of the effects of sin, especially to the death of infants. The apostle affirms, in the most express terms, that death is the effect of sin (Rom 5:12); and experience as well as Scripture shows that death passes upon all men. It passes even upon those who are incapable of committing actual sin; for ‘death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression’ (Rom 5:14).2
- Shaw, Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, on chapter 6, sections 3-4.
Conclusion. I have tried to outline this subject of the Fall, a subject that has such relevance and consequences for us all. To study it shows – particularly in examining the Word of God – that our history, destiny and experience are inseparably bound up with the two Adams (see Rom 5:12-19, 1 Cor 15:20-22). Particularly there is a union with both Adams.
We cannot properly appreciate such important concepts as the covenants and imputation apart from the union involved, our fallen state in Adam by nature, and the state of grace in Christ Jesus according to the new covenant. The spiritual and moral wilderness that we are now in flows from the discrediting and rejecting of the Word of God, particularly the Book of Genesis. Society is reaping the bitter fruits of evolutionary theory, and large sections of the visible Church have imbibed the poison. However, what has also affected the Church in this country is Arminianism, which has watered down the doctrine of the Fall and man’s total ruin and helplessness, and so his total inability to recover himself. We hardly need to state that recovery can only come by getting back to basics, and the book of beginnings which our Westminster doctrine is founded on.