tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post4755006014935536958..comments2023-10-11T02:14:41.158-07:00Comments on An Introspective of an Arminian Christian: Arminius on the First Sin of the First ManA.M. Malletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17354778419074793522noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post-44716434241234337592011-07-16T07:53:06.266-07:002011-07-16T07:53:06.266-07:00Ken,
Classical Arminian thought, at least that exp...Ken,<br />Classical Arminian thought, at least that expressed by the early Remonstrants, assigns some measure of guilt to all men due to Adam’s single transgression. Whether we wish to call that imputed or otherwise, I cannot say. It can be said however that this viewpoint holds man guilty of that transgression both “legally” and within our own “moral constitutions”. Simon Episcopius, while in exile following Dort, presented the Remonstrant confession to refute the misrepresentations of Dort and to bring together in one body of doctrine a comprehensive Arminian or Remonstrance perspective. The following passage is taken from this Confession to address this particular issue.<br /><br /><i>Because Adam was the stock and root of the whole human race,(a) he therefore involved and implicated not only himself, but also all his posterity (as if they were contained in his loins and went forth from him by natural generation) in the same death and misery with himself, so that all men without any discrimination, only our LORD Jesus Christ excepted, are by this one sin of Adam deprived of that primeval happiness, and destitute of true righteousness necessary for achieving eternal life, and consequently are now born subject to that eternal death of which we spoke, and manifold miseries. And this is customarily and vulgarly called original sin, concerning which it must also be held that the most kind God, in his beloved son Jesus Christ, just as a second and new Adam, has prepared for all a remedy for this general evil which we derived from Adam. So even from this [original sin] sufficiently appears the hurtful error of those who are accustomed to lay a foundation for the decree of absolute reprobation in this sin. (b)<br /><br />Besides this sin are the proper and actual sins of each and every man, which also really multiply our guilt before God and obscure our mind concerning spiritual matters. Indeed little by little they blind [us], and finally deprave our will more and more by the habit of sinning. (c)<br />a. Acts 17:26, Heb 7:10, Rom 5:12, John 14<br />b. See the Canons of the Synod of Dort, chapter 1, at the beginning<br />c. Gen 6:5, Gen 8:21, 2 Cor 4:3, Eph 4:17-19, Jer 13:23, John 8:24, Rom 7:14, 2 Pet 2:19<br /><br />The Arminian Confession of 1621, Mark A. Ellis, Pickwick, Wipf and Stock, Eugene, 2005, p65</i>A.M. Malletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17354778419074793522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post-34805950937064522172011-07-14T18:21:38.366-07:002011-07-14T18:21:38.366-07:00Ken,
I will come back to this in a bit. I am not s...Ken,<br />I will come back to this in a bit. I am not sure if I can adequately answer your inquiry but I would like to provide Simon Episcopius thoughts on the matter from his Confession. I don't have it electronically so I need to unpack a box.A.M. Malletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17354778419074793522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post-24482808111241335502011-07-12T13:28:32.598-07:002011-07-12T13:28:32.598-07:00Can you define precisely what Arminius or Arminian...Can you define precisely what Arminius or Arminians mean by a participation in the loins of Adam? I suspect that they, like the Reformed Church from which they came, suffer from an inconsistent leaning on the terms of traducianism while simultaneously denying the substance of those terms.<br /><br />"Gratuitous imputation" is simply the idea that Adam's sin was foreign to us, but imputed anyway by the will of God to see us as if we were in union with Adam. The Reformed Church, until Hodge, had held that Adam's sin was not foreign, but that mankind participated in that sin and earned the consequences (even though they denied traducianism).<br /><br />Ken HamrickAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post-816700004788537582011-06-27T08:01:32.258-07:002011-06-27T08:01:32.258-07:00Ken,
I believe Arminius is expressing the notion t...Ken,<br />I believe Arminius is expressing the notion that the “whole of the sin” constitutes our “fallen nature” and that we suffer the full effect of Adam’s sin because we participated in the extent of that personal sin as “in his loins”. I do not mean to state that each of us are guilty of the specific act of “eating the apple”, so to speak. Instead, our nature became wholly corrupt and unavoidably so at that moment of Adam’s personal transgression. His corruption is our corruption rather than merely being imputed to us.<br /><br />I had to read some on gratuitous imputation and must admit I do not fully understand the perspective. I need to read Hodge’s view on this. However I did find a rather lengthy treatment of the matter from an opposing view in The Southern Presbyterian Review, Vol. 27, pp.318-357, The Presbyterian Publishing House, Columbia, SC, 1876. Google Books has a copy of this volume.A.M. Malletthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17354778419074793522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698448.post-42902477919006133992011-06-22T13:04:30.095-07:002011-06-22T13:04:30.095-07:00There's a lot about the Arminian view that I d...There's a lot about the Arminian view that I don't know. I'm currently studying Robert Landis' critique of Hodge's gratuitous imputation scheme. Landis claims that the Reformed Church (until Hodge) always held that the union of nature in Adam gave a culpable participation in his sin, and they rejected gratuitous imputation of Adam's sin (as an "alien peccatum"). He claims it was first Pelagius and then the Remonstrants who adopted it (as well as Socinians). However, in the section you posted, XVI, it says, "The whole of this sin, however, is not peculiar to our first parents, but is common to the entire race and to all their posterity, who, at the time when this sin was committed, were in their loins, and who have since descended from them by the natural mode of propagation, according to the primitive benediction. For in Adam 'all have sinned.'(Rom 5:12)" This sounds more like the Augustinian realism than gratuitous imputation. Can you explain it for me? Thanks,<br />Ken Hamrickbiblicalrealisthttp://biblicalrealist.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com