Alan Dale Gross
Well-Known Member
"HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY AND MAN'S SPIRITUAL INABILITY."
"Another question concerning man's Responsibility is, How can man be Responsible for not fully Obeying the Law of God and for not Receiving the Gospel when they hear it, when he is unable by Nature to do either of these?
"For proof of man's Spiritual Inability, see chapters on Sin and Conversion.
"The answer to this question is that
man can be Responsible for what he is unable to do
only on the supposition that he is to blame for his Inability.
"And it is a fact that man is to blame for his Spiritual Inability.
"It is not that he individually, by his own personal act, originated the Inability, because he was born with it.
"But every man sinned in Adam, and thus originated his Spiritual Inability.
"That every man sinned in Adam is the true teaching of Rom. 5:12- "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin;
and so death passed unto all men, for that ALL SINNED."
"Sinned" in the Greek is aorist tense, which expresses pointed past action. The passage makes it refer to the participation of all men in the sin of Adam.
"But how did we participate in the sin of Adam when we were not born when he sinned?
We think we cannot do better than give the following words of A. H. Strong in reply:
"God Imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that Organic Unity of Mankind by which the Whole Race at the Time of Adam's Transgression existed, not individually, but Seminally, in him as its Head.
"The Total Life of Humanity was then in Adam; the Race as yet had its Being only in him. Its Essence was not yet individualized; its Forces were not yet distributed; the Powers which now exist in separate men were then Unified and Localized in Adam;
"Adam's will was yet the will of the Species.
In Adam's Free Act, the will of the Race revolted from God and the Nature of the Race corrupted itself.
"The Nature which we now possess is the same Nature that corrupted itself in Adam- not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him. Adam's sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours--we and all other men having existed as One Moral person, or One Moral Whole, in him, and as the result of that Transgression, possessing a Nature destitute of Love to God and prone to evil" (Systematic Theology, p. 328).
From: HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY
"Another question concerning man's Responsibility is, How can man be Responsible for not fully Obeying the Law of God and for not Receiving the Gospel when they hear it, when he is unable by Nature to do either of these?
"For proof of man's Spiritual Inability, see chapters on Sin and Conversion.
"The answer to this question is that
man can be Responsible for what he is unable to do
only on the supposition that he is to blame for his Inability.
"And it is a fact that man is to blame for his Spiritual Inability.
"It is not that he individually, by his own personal act, originated the Inability, because he was born with it.
"But every man sinned in Adam, and thus originated his Spiritual Inability.
"That every man sinned in Adam is the true teaching of Rom. 5:12- "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin;
and so death passed unto all men, for that ALL SINNED."
"Sinned" in the Greek is aorist tense, which expresses pointed past action. The passage makes it refer to the participation of all men in the sin of Adam.
"But how did we participate in the sin of Adam when we were not born when he sinned?
We think we cannot do better than give the following words of A. H. Strong in reply:
"God Imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that Organic Unity of Mankind by which the Whole Race at the Time of Adam's Transgression existed, not individually, but Seminally, in him as its Head.
"The Total Life of Humanity was then in Adam; the Race as yet had its Being only in him. Its Essence was not yet individualized; its Forces were not yet distributed; the Powers which now exist in separate men were then Unified and Localized in Adam;
"Adam's will was yet the will of the Species.
In Adam's Free Act, the will of the Race revolted from God and the Nature of the Race corrupted itself.
"The Nature which we now possess is the same Nature that corrupted itself in Adam- not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him. Adam's sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours--we and all other men having existed as One Moral person, or One Moral Whole, in him, and as the result of that Transgression, possessing a Nature destitute of Love to God and prone to evil" (Systematic Theology, p. 328).
From: HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY