Immediate Imputation or Mediate

[heymikey80]

I'll try to dredge up a citation or two, but I remember noticing that for John Murray's fine exegesis of "the Imputation of Adam's Sin", that Original Sin was concluded as "unmediated" -- that is, technically, "immediate". The explanation was rather interesting, too: that everyone who attempted a mediate-imputation view for Adam's sin ran aground of some one or another issue within the doctrine of Original Sin or with specific Scriptures, one.

On first-blush it's always seemed to me that if Adam actually committed the sin, and I didn't, that somehow the thing was mediated through Adam to me. But in actuality the sin of Adam had an unmediated effect on me.

Plus the parallel point of Romans 5, that our righteousness is mediated through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, is pretty clearly mediate imputation.

Again, most of this was described by Murray, but then no sound theology emerged with this concept.

 

[hedrick]

Surprisingly, Calvin denies that we are guilty of Adam's sin. I had never thought about whether this contradicts Rom 5, although I had assumed from other discussions that the Adam/Christ parallelism in Rom 5 would say that we sinned in Adam. Sloppy reading, I now see.

Looking at it now, despite the apparent parallelism of Rom 5, Paul never actually says that we sinned in Adam. It says that death entered through Adam, and spread to us as we sin. However redemption comes to us through Christ specifically because of our union with him, though that doesn't seem quite so explicit in this part of Rom 5.

Analogies are never perfect. It looks like the limit of the analogy is that sin entered through Adam and redemption entered through Jesus. But the analogy doesn't include the mechanisms.

This is interesting in the context of other discussions. One of the major objections to evolution is that if there is no literal Adam, then the whole mechanism of redemption as described in Rom 5 falls apart. But if this analysis is right, a literal Adam isn't actually necessary for original sin to work. Rom 5 isn't telling us how original sin is working, but is simply giving a nice analogy based on a concept of sin which his hearers would already have, to help understand Christ's role.

[Note that evolution needn't deny the existence of a literal Adam. One could reasonably maintain that the soul, whether we conceive of it as a separate immaterial part or a quality of our existence, doesn't develop naturally, but is a gift of God. In that case he could have chosen to give it starting with a specific pair of people. I'm not sure whether I'd actually say this or not, but it's a way to maintain a literal Adam.]

 

[heymikey80]

You brought it up, and I do find it interesting that it's death that enters because of Adam, death spreading to all because all sinned.

I'm not entirely sure that's all there is to it, because Romans 5:12 is sitting in the middle of an analogy. And again, the analogy is one of contrasting results -- antiparallel -- death in Adam, life in Christ. The issue I've noticed is that the antiparallel is thought to operate on the same mechanism: imputation. Represented by Adam, we all fall under the condemnation of sin. Represented by Christ, we all fall under the grace of God to salvation.

The points of parallel & antiparallel seem to need some level of contrast, though. For instance, even if Adam's sin is unmediated, it's pretty clear that Jesus' righteousness is mediated through union with Christ. So there's some points where the analogy breaks up.