Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 60:238 (Apr 1903)
Article: The First Sin, Its Consequences, And The Remedy
Author: Cornelius Walker

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 315

The First Sin, Its Consequences, And The Remedy

Pro. Cornelius Walker

WE speak of the sin of the first man. Rabbinical Theology, more that of literalism, speaks of it as that of the first woman. And the Apostle himself, who elsewhere runs the parallel between the sin and death of the first man and the grace and life of the second, speaks of the woman as first in the transgression. It is, therefore, as man the head of the woman, identified in this, his headship, with the destinies of the race springing from them, that he is contemplated as the first transgressor. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men”; “In Adam all men die.” But, in reference to each of these we ask, How? How did the first man sin? In what way did he die; and, in so doing, communicate sin and death to his posterity?

In looking at this transgression and the questions involved, we are approaching what, since the fifth century, has been one of the chosen battle-grounds of theological controversy; the most positive assertions often being made where there was barely ground for a hesitating conjecture. The subject, however regarded, has its difficulties; and in no respect more so than in the ambiguity of the terms as they have been employed. The three main terms, for instance,—sin, guilt, punishment,—are, alike and each of them, used in at least two, if not more, senses. The first, “sin,” sometimes means an act, sometimes a state the result or effect of an act, and sometimes it has been made

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 316

to mean a state or condition prior to action, or even the capacity of action. The second, “guilt,” sometimes means the criminality, reatus culpae, of an evil-doer; sometimes the effect, reatus poenae, a state or condition of those in themselves innocent, but affected by the criminality of others; and the other, and last of these words, “punishment,” sometimes means the moral or legal consequences of evil-doing to the wrong-doer himself; sometimes similar consequences, so far as they can be similar, in the experience of others, who took no part whatever in the act producing them. It behooves us, therefore, at the very outset, to be on our guard, as to the sense in which any such term is taken; as also the importance, in our usage, of adhering to one that is throughout consistently the same. Otherwise we are in hopeless confusion.

In looking, then, at this first sin or wrong act of our first parents, we are met by three questions, under which may be ranged most of the discussions with which it is connected. The first of these is as to the nature of the act or sin itself in those by whom it was perpetrated. The second is that of it...