Formulating Nevin’s Doctrine, Real Union or Legal Fiction 4

CONTINUED

Since Nevin was never particularly interested in original sin per se, he never systematically set forth his position on the subject. He says enough, however, for us to summarize a systematic position:

Adam was the natural root of the human race as well as its representative. When he sinned by eating the forbidden fruit he (1) incurred guilt, (2) lost his original righteousness, and (3) became corrupt. It is important to realize that (temporally) all of these things happened simultaneously. Obviously, he could not sin and only later lose his righteousness. Furthermore, the sin itself was the beginning of his corruption (indeed, corruption and want of original righteousness could easily be understood as different aspects of the same reality). Finally, the guilt was imputed because of the sin at the same time that the sin was committed.

Now, all Adam’s descendants who come from him by ordinary generation, come from Adam and Eve as sinners. They are guilty, lacking in righteousness, and corrupt. From this nature springs all subsequent human beings, who as separate individuals manifest this same guilt, lack of righteousness, and corruption. This corruption is simply the continuation of Adam’s first sin. [Why aren’t additional sins passed on in this way? One must remember that Nevin did not deny that Adam was a federal representative of the human race. To this objection he could have simply responded that only the first sin was confirmed into permanent depravity by God, so that it affected his posterity. The first sin especially confirms Adam’s descendants in depravity and guilt for the same reason that it especially confirmed Adam in depravity and guilt.]

Thus, the guilt attending that corruption is the guilt of Adam’s first sin. All Adamites have solidarity with Adam’s sin and guilt. We are guilty, lacking in righteousness, and corrupt because we have union with Adam.

Here we see the similarities and dissimilarities, between our union with Adam and our union with Christ. We are in union with Adam simply by virtue of being human. To be a human being means simply to have acquired our nature from Adam–a corrupt nature. Personal existence is inconceivable without him. Yet Christ is communicated to us by the Holy Spirit as an alien person with an alien righteousness so that we, because we are engrafted into Him, are given justification and sanctification–His righteousness is imputed to us and His holy life is imparted to us so that we ourselves grow in holiness. There is nothing in Nevin’s presentation which renders justification a “transfusion” as in Tridentine theology. [In the January 1854 Biblical Repertory & Princeton Review, Hodge wrote a review of the English translation of Philip Schaff’s History of the Apostolic Church. Since he had already reviewed the original German version, Hodge took this opportunity to simply evaluate the “Mercersburg theology” and the furor it was causing. He magnanimously defends Schaff by claiming that he was himself quite sound but was too much influenced by Nevin! Of special interest in this review is the fact that Hodge praised Schaff’s defense of forensic justification as impeccably sound (pp. 154-155). Yet later in the same article he criticizes Schaff for holding the same view of justification as Nevin (pp. 175-176). Somehow, it is possible for someone who holds to a non-protestant, “romish” view of justification to simultaneously be a clear expounder of the pure Reformed doctrine.]

The fact that the basis of justification is mystical union through the Holy Spirit does not change the fact that the nature of justification is declarative and forensic. The point simply is that there is a basis for God’s declaration–union with Christ.

[John Murray (in The Imputation of Adam’s Sin [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959] p. 70) wrote defending “immediate” imputation: “The one ground upon which the imputation of the righteousness of Christ becomes ours is the union with Christ. In other words, the justified person is constituted righteous by the obedience of Christ because of the solidarity established between Christ and the justified person. The solidarity constitutes the bond by which the righteousness of Christ becomes that of the believer.” Nevin could and would, I think, easily subscribe to this formulation. But Murray continues: “This is to say that the conjunction is immediate. If the case is thus on that side of the analogy which pertains to justification, we should expect the modus operandi to be the same in connection with condemnation.” Here we see that Nevin and Murray are of two different worlds. Nevin never took sides on the question of “mediate” versus “immediate” imputation, and I suspect that he would simply reject the distinction, as Dabney did, as an “over-refinement” (Discussions: Evangelical & Theological, vol 1, [London: Banner of Truth, 1890, 1967], p. 264). But for Nevin, the Holy Spirit is the One through whom there is a “solidarity established between Christ and the justified person.” For Murray this union or solidarity is somehow a transtemporal phenomenon–a legal union, or a property of God’s eternal decrees. Thus Murray makes original sin rest on that sort of solidarity, “[A]ll the members of the race were contemplated by God as destined to exist; they were foreordained to be and the certainty of their existence was thus guaranteed. It is important in this connection to bear in mind that as thus contemplated by God they were contemplated no otherwise than as members of the race in solidaric union with Adam and therefore as having sinned in him. In other words, they are not conceived of in the mind and purpose of God except as one with Adam; they are not contemplated as potentially but as actually one with Adam in his sin” (p. 91).]

TO BE CONTINUED

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  1. Pingback: Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Hodge’s position against Mercersberg, Real Union or Legal Fiction 3

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