Those who reject the untenable doctrine of preexistence and yet hold to the principle that guilt can attach only to what is due to our agency, are driven to assume that Adam and his race are in such a sense one, that his act of disobedience was literally the act of all mankind. And consequently that they are as truly personally guilty on account of it, as Adam himself was; and that the inherent corruption flowing from that act, belongs to us in the same sense and in the same way, that it belonged to him. His sin, it is therefore said, “Is ours not because it is imputed to us; but it is imputed to us, because it is truly and properly our own.” We have constantly to contend with the ambiguity of terms. There is a sense in which the above proposition is perfectly true, and there is a sense in which it is not true. It is true that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us because it is ours according to the terms of the covenant of grace; because it was wrought out for us by our great head and representative, who obeyed and suffered in our stead. But it is not true that it is ours in the sense that we were the agents by whom that righteousness was effected, or the persons in whom it inheres. In like manner, Adam’s sin may be said to be imputed to us because it is ours, inasmuch as it is the sin of the divinely constituted head and representative of our race. But it is not ours in the same sense in which it was his. It was not our act, i.e., an act in which our reason, will, and conscience were exercised. There is a sense in which the act of an agent is the act of the principal. It binds him in law, as effectually as he could bind himself. But he is not, on that account, the efficient agent of the act. The sense in which many assert that the act of Adam was our act, is, that the same numerical nature or substance, the same reason and will which existed and acted in Adam, belong to us; so that we were truly and properly the agents of his act of apostasy.
President Edwards’ Theory of Identity.
The assumption which President Edwards undertakes to controvert, is, “That Adam and his posterity are not one, but entirely distinct agents.”1 The theory on which he endeavours to prove that Adam and his posterity were one agent, is not exactly the old realistic theory, it is rather a theory of his own, and depends on his seculiar views of oneness or identity. According to him, all oneness depends upon “the arbitrary constitution of God.” The only reason why a full grown tree is the same with its first germ; or that the body of an adult man is the same with his infant frame; is that God so wills to regard them. No creature is one and the same in the different periods of its existence, because it is numerically one and the same substance, or life, or organism; but simply because God “treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so leads us to regard and treat them as one.”2 “If the existence,” he says, “of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God’s immediate power in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who, by his wise and sovereign establishment so unites successive new effects, that he treats them as one.”3 He uses two illustrations which make his meaning perfectly plain. The brightness of the moon seems to us a permanent thing, but is really a new effect produced every moment. It ceases, and is renewed, in every successive point of time, and so becomes altogether a new effect at each instant. It is no more numerically the same thing with that which existed in the preceding moment, than the sound of the wind that blows now, is individually the same sound of the wind which blew just before. What is the of the brightness of the moon, he says, must be true also of its solidity, and of everything else belonging to its substance. Again, images of things placed before a mirror seem to remain precisely the same, with a continuing perfect identity. But it is known to be otherwise. These images are constantly renewed by the impression and reflection of new rays of light. The image which exists this moment is not at all derived from the image which existed the last preceding moment. It is no more numerically the same, than if painted anew by an artist with colours which vanish as soon as they are put on. The obvious fallacy of these illustrations is, that the cases are apparently, but not really alike. The brightness of the moon and the image on a mirror, are not substances having continued existence; they are mere effects on our visual organs. Whereas the substances which produce those effects are objective existences or entities, and not subjective states of our sensibility. Edwards, however, says that what is true of the images, must be true of the bodies themselves. “They cannot be the same, with an absolute identity, but must be wholly renewed every moment, if the case be as has been proved, that their present existence is not, strictly speaking, at all the effect of their past existence; but is wholly, every instant, the effect of a new agency or exertion of the powerful cause of their existence.”4 As therefore, there is no such thing as numerical identity of substance in created things, and as all oneness depends on “the arbitrary constitution of God,” and things are one only because God so regards and treats them, there is “no solid reason,” Edwards contends, why the posterity of Adam should not be “treated as one with him for the derivation … . of the loss of righteousness, and consequent corruption and guilt.”5 According to this doctrine of identity, everything that exists, even the soul of man, is, and remains one, not because of any continuity of life and substance, but as a series of new effects produced in every successive moment by the renewed efficiency of God. The whole theory resolves itself into the doctrine that preservation is continued creation. The argument of Edwards in proof of that point is, that “the existence of every created substance, is a dependent existence, and therefore is an effect and must have some cause; and the cause must be one of these two; either the antecedent existence of the same substance, or else the power of the Creator.” It cannot be the antecedent existence of the same substance, and therefore must be the power of God. His conclusion is that God’s upholding of created substance “is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment.”6