A Hodge-Podge of Reasonings on Original Sin

For a recent exchange on original sin with Presbyterian Reverend Matthew Winzer, see the threads here and here in which I more broadly defended Augustinian-Reformed position on original sin against Charles Hodge's understanding and, more narrowly, defended the realist view. 

A point of appreciation I had was Winzer's willingness to own that his view is nominalistic. Of course, his pushback against certain arguments I made was expected. But while his explicit advocacy of nominalism was honest, his claim that Protestantism logically entails it is for that reason all the more dangerous. Unwitting third party readers may be attracted by Winzer's boldness and position, not realizing the high stakes involved in affirming nominalism. Robert Landis gives a sampling of these stakes in The Doctrine of Original Sin, a nigh-comprehensive refutation of Charles Hodge's implicit nominalism vis-a-vis his doctrine of original sin:

...let the serious-minded reader propound to himself, and frankly answer according to the spontaneous convictions of his moral nature and the impressions derived from the teachings of the divine word, the question, whether it can conceivably consist with the moral perfections of God, as revealed in His word and works, that He, on any ground whatever and by a mere act of the will, should constitute an innocent dependent creature depraved, apostate, and criminal, and then treat him or proceed against him as such? May He, in the case of creatures in whom sin or depravity does not exist, proceed, by a mere sovereign act of His will, first to produce it within them, and then to punish them for it according to the fearful inflictions of His punitive justice? In other words, Is it the prerogative of divine justice to pronounce sentence according to actually existing desert, e.g., in the case of apostasy or criminality of any sort; or are we to regard it as possessing the prerogative first to produce effectively that apostasy or ill-desert, and then to visit with its fearful retributions those who have thus been rendered subject to the infliction? If the latter, (and the latter is what Dr. Hodge teaches as our theology,) then the conception of divine justice in its relation to the creature, and as entertained by all rational or accountable beings, must certainly undergo an essential and radical modification, and along therewith the whole science of ethics and theology.

These questions are related to what I've called "absolute divine voluntarism" just as much as nominalism. Nominalism suggests that something is "true" in name only - i.e. without any correspondence to or grounding in (or of) a subject in question. In this context, is it truthful to impute sin to infants who have not in any sense sinned? 

Absolute divine voluntarism suggests that that which is said to be "good" or "just" is in virtue of God's absolutely free will only - i.e. a will that analogously has no correspondence to or grounding in, say, God's own necessary and intrinsic character, nature or attributes. In this context: is it good and just to impute sin to infants who have not in any sense sinned? 

The point is that these questions are of no small importance; in fact, Winzer would likely agree with that (if not Landis' and my acute framing of it). Now, I've elsewhere argued against absolute divine voluntarism here and for a defense of the realist view against nominalism here (see also the entire website in general). And those interested in my defense of the truthfulness, goodness, and justice of God's judgments can read the above links to the threads for the debate between Winzer and I, the end of which had reached a point of diminishing returns such that I did not expect any further reason to engage. 

The arguments are so sufficiently clear that were it not for an interested reader who asked me some questions at the end of the second thread linked above (posts 31-32), I would have not thought an extended reflection worthwhile. The understanding and statements on the matter such as one may find in Landis, Samuel Baird, John Murray, George P. Hutchinson, and amongst contemporary scholars like J. V. Fesko and C. N. Willborne are uncontroversial and, I think, unrefuted, despite the impression one might get when reading Winzer. But as men like John Murray are no longer with us to defend themselves against Winzer's false portrayals, perhaps the following will in some manner help to set the record straight regarding the broader, Augustinian-Reformed position which I refer to above.

At the outset, it will be helpful to outline what is at issue. The theologians I mentioned just above (and others) contend Hodge's following statements are out of step with the Reformed tradition. In his discussion of the meaning of sin, Hodge writes the following in Volume II of his Systematic Theology: 

Sin includes guilt and pollution; the one expresses its relation to the justice, the other to the holiness of God. These two elements of sin are revealed in the conscience of every sinner. He knows himself to be amenable to the justice of God and offensive in his holy eyes. He is to himself even, hateful and degraded and self-condemned. There are, however, two things included in guilt. The one we express by the words criminality, demerit, and blameworthiness; the other is the obligation to suffer the punishment due to our offences. These are evidently distinct, although expressed by the same word. The guilt of our sins is said to have been laid upon Christ, that is, the obligation to satisfy the demands of justice on account of them. But He did not assume the criminality, the demerit, or blameworthiness of our transgressions. When the believer is justified, his guilt, but not his demerit, is removed. He remains in fact, and in his own eyes, the same unworthy, hell-deserving creature, in himself considered, that he was before. A man condemned at a human tribunal for any offence against the community, when he has endured the penalty which the law prescribes, is no less unworthy, his demerit as much exists as it did from the beginning; but his liability to justice or obligation to the penalty of the law, in other words, his guilt in that sense of the word, is removed. It would be unjust to punish him a second time for that offence. This distinction theologians are accustomed to express by the terms reatus culpæ and reatus pœnæ. Culpa is (strafwürdiger Zustand) blameworthiness; and reatus culpæ is guilt in the form of inherent ill-desert. Whereas the reatus pœnæ is the debt we owe to justice...

A few pages later, in discussing the immediate imputation of original sin, Hodge says:

2. To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, is to impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not criminality or moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral pollution, but the judicial obligation to satisfy justice. Hence the evil consequent on the imputation is not an arbitrary infliction; not merely a misfortune or calamity; not a chastisement in the proper sense of that word, but a punishment, i.e., an evil inflicted in execution of the penalty of law and for the satisfaction of justice. 

Note carefully what has been said. In the first section, Hodge says:

"Culpa is... blameworthiness..." 

"...reatus culpæ is guilt in the form of inherent ill-desert."

Other synonyms he uses to describe culpa include "criminality, demerit, and blameworthiness."

In the second section, Hodge says:

"To impute sin... is to impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not criminality or moral ill-desert, or demerit."

In other words, Hodge has rejected that the imputation of the guilt of Adam's sin involved the imputation of "criminality, or moral ill-desert, or demerit." That is, Hodge has "distinguished" reatus culpæ and reatus pœnæ in such a way that Hodge thinks that reatus pœnæ can be (and is) imputed without reatus culpæ; obligation to punishment can be (and is) imputed without criminality. On his own terms, Hodge rejects the imputation of [reatus] culpa.

 

The importance of this point will come into focus below when I turn to Winzer's own assertions. In terms of initial problems with Hodge's remarks, though, one need only read the citations I (and, ironically, Winzer himself!) provided in our discussion. I will just add Turretin as one Reformed witness who rejects Hodge's separation of reatus culpæ from reatus pœnæ (link).

Falsely, however, is guilt distinguished by the papists into guilt of culpability and of punishment. The guilt of culpability (reatus culpae) according to them is that by which the sinner is of himself unworthy of the grace of God and worthy of his wrath and condemnation; but the guilt of punishment (reatus poenae) is that by which he is subject to condemnation and obliged to it. The former guilt, they say, is taken away by Christ. The latter, however, can remain (at least as to the guilt of temporal punishment). But the emptiness of the distinction appears from the nature of both. Since culpability and punishment are related and guilt is nothing else than the obligation to punishment arising from culpability, they mutually posit and remove each other so that culpability and its guilt being removed, the punishment itself ought to be taken away necessarily (as it can be inflicted only on account of culpability). Otherwise culpability cannot be said to be remitted or its guilt taken away, if there still remains something to be purged from the sinner because of it.

"Guilt is nothing else than the obligation to punishment arising from culpability." How different this is to Hodge! And as Turretin associates this with Roman Catholicism, it is no wonder that, as George P. Hutchinson puts it, Landis charged "that Hodge's doctrine is essentially the same as that of the Remonstrants and the Socinians, as well as that of the Nominalists in the Roman Church" (The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterianism, pg. 74). 

For good measure, the Reformed tradition drew on the thought of Augustine in their affirmation of the culpa(m) of Adam's progeny. In Against Julian, written against a disciple of Pelagius, Augustine affirms that the punishment infants experience due to original sin entails their culpability in said sin:

I ask you by what justice must an image of God that has in no way transgressed the law of the God be estranged from the kingdom of God, from the life of God? Do you not hear how the Apostle detests certain men, who, he says, are 'estranged from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart'? Is a non-baptized infant bound by this sentence or not? If you say he is not bound, they you will be vanquished and punished by the evangelical truth and by the testimony of Pelagius himself, for where is the life of God except in the kingdom of God, into which none but those born again of water and the Spirit can enter? But, if you assert that he is bound, you acknowledge the punishment. Then you must acknowledge the guilt (culpam). You confess the torment—confess, then, that it is deserved.

Further citations of Reformed theologians by Landis, Samuel Baird, W. G. T. Shedd, R. L. Dabney, et al. constitute a veritable cloud of witnesses regarding the consensus that, contrary to Hodge, the imputation of the guilt (reatus) of Adam's sin inseparably and singularly involves punishment (pœnæ) by reason of culpability (culpa). Shedd in particular notes that Calvin writes in the Latin edition of The Institutes, Book II.i.8 (link), "no esset reatus absque culpa." This consensus is reaffirmed by contemporary scholars I've already alluded to. In my conversation with Winzer, I cited J. V. Fesko as writing (in Death in Adam, Life in Christ):

Hodge believed that when God imputed Adam’s sin to humanity, He only imputed the penalty, not Adam’s guilt or moral corruption. Hodge explains: ‘To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, is to impute the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant not criminality or moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral pollution, but the judicial obligation to satisfy justice.’ In technical terms, Hodge maintains that Adam’s imputed sin is not his guilt (reatus culpae), nor the demeritum (demerit), but the penalty (reatus poenae). Hodge’s opinion diverges from the majority report within the tradition; namely, theologians argued that God imputed both guilt (reatus culpae) and penalty (reatus poenae)... Hodge argued that God imputed Adam’s sin to his offspring, which only entailed the liability to penalty (reatus poenae), not Adam’s guilt (reatus culpae).

As I said, Winzer is aware of this statement. I also made him aware of the conclusion to C. N. Willborne's contribution to a chapter on Hodge's view of original sin published last year within a larger volume about Hodge (Charles Hodge: American Reformed Orthodox Theologian). Winzer has read the second paragraph in what follows (pgs. 207, 228):

Guilt for Hodge does not include the demerit of Adam’s first sin, which Turretin seem to have taught. So, Crisp piggy backs on John Murray by suggesting that Hodge “dropped the culpa aspect of original guilt, retaining only the reatus, derived solely from possession of original sin itself.” This made the cause of liability to punishment resulting from original sin more ambiguous and undefined in Hodge’s writings than in earlier Reformed orthodox theology, constituting an element of discontinuity...

Was Hodge accurate when he averred that he had introduced no new ideas nor attempted to improve upon the tradition? In charity we think he honestly thought so. Is there reason to doubt that he maintained a position consistent with “old Calvinists” on the issue of federalism and transmission of Adam’s sin? There is, we think, good reason to doubt his consistency. Did he overreach in claiming a number of post-Reformation representatives in support of his views? We have shown good reason to say so. And, finally, was Muller’s supposition accurate that Hodge made no formal or virtually no dogmatic alterations to Reformed Orthodoxy? That little word “virtually” may be the saving virtue in the statement. Yet, Hodge did alter Reformed ideas at points.

Straightforwardly, Hodge's statements in his Systematic Theology reject that the so-called "guilt" (for what is guilt without culpability?) of Adam's sin which is imputed to his progeny involves their culpability, criminality, etc. This is how all scholars of whom I am aware have interpreted Hodge. 

Frankly, it shocks me Winzer has ignored rather than paused to consider and respectfully engage the work of these men. I've also repeatedly asked Winzer to offer a scholar who thinks otherwise. Until he does, it is the obvious course to follow the evidence above to its natural conclusion: in the context of original sin, Hodge rejected the imputation of reatus culpa; therefore, Hodge divides reatus culpa from reatus poenae.

So much for the setting of the stage. Now, one question I have been asked is whether there may be a misunderstanding between Winzer and I. I rather think that the misunderstanding is between he and John Murray, the author of The Imputation of Adam's Sin, as I'll return to momentarily. 

I had cited John Murray as an example of someone whose work on original sin is well-respected - a theologian who disagrees with my own realist view yet also affirms that Charles Hodge's doctrine of original sin was a departure from the majority of the Reformed tradition. I've written about this before, actually, and Winzer was even aware of this post prior to his making the second thread linked at the beginning of this post. So there should have been no cause for misunderstanding.

Here was a question I asked Winzer in my first reply to the second thread: 

What do you think of Murray's remark that for "Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries... there can be no poena or, for that matter, reatus poena apart from culpa" (pgs. 79-80)? Then on page 81, he summarizes a statement by Calvin to mean that "...this is to say that there is no liability to penalty without blameworthiness." And so forth for several more pages. Are you willing to concede that Hodge's statements diverged from the Reformed tradition?

Winzer responded:

Murray has failed to parse the issue. The divines are not saying these are two different things that are imputed. They are saying, in the matter of imputation, that they are the same thing, that is, that guilt only pertains to liability to punishment.

At this point, I was and truly remain baffled for the following reasons:

1) Winzer is correct that "The divines are not saying these are two different things that are imputed."

2) Murray affirms this, as will be shown below.

3) Hodge denies this, as was shown above.

Naturally, I attempted to correct Winzer's error. Twice. I cited scholars, noted that his own examples contradict his position - all of which was ignored. In response to my attempts, Winzer tripled-down:

The state of the question is, whether these are divided in the act of imputation. Hodge denies; Murray affirms.

Once again, there should be no misunderstanding between Winzer and I. Now, if I had to venture a guess, here is where I think Winzer goes awry: recall his above assertion that regarding reatus culpa and reatus poenae, "in the matter of imputation, that they are the same thing, that is, that guilt only pertains to liability to punishment." 

It is difficult to understand the meaning of this in a way which avoids collapsing reatus culpa into reatus poenae such that culpa retains any distinctive meaning from poenae. That is, Winzer seems to entirely eliminate the any trace of the meaning of former from the context of original sin such that the entire matter of imputation is resolved in the latter. Culpa just is poenae, culpability just is punishment. If I have not put my finger on the matter, the alternative is that Winzer is simply incorrect that Hodge affirms reatus culpa and that Murray denies it. 

But if indeed I am right in understanding what Winzer thinks, even if he were right, it would still be impossible to defend Hodge insofar as Hodge completely divides the two. Hodge says that reatus culpa and reatus poenae "are evidently distinct." Hodge does not deny a conceptual orvevem imputable distinction here; thus, when he rejects that criminality (culpability) is imputed in the context original sin, he has, contrary to Winzer, "evidently" divided the two. 

Further, assuming I am correct that Winzer has collapsed reatus culpa into reatus poenae such that the former conceptually disappears, then as was noted already, Winzer's understanding is refuted by Turretin: "guilt is nothing else than the obligation to punishment arising from culpability." In short, it is true that there are not two different "things" imputed. But the point is that that which is imputed involves culpability and that this is at least conceptually distinct from the punishment which arises from it. 

For another example, since the person who asked me some questions at the end of my discussion with Winzer mentioned John Owen, here is Murray's conclusion following his citation of Owen, a theologian "to whom... Hodge made appeal" (link):

‘‘Much less is there any thing of weight in the distinction of ‘reatus culpae’ and ‘reatus poenae;’ for this ‘reatus culpae’ is nothing but ‘dignitas poenae propter culpam’ .... So, therefore, there can be no punishment, nor ‘reatus poenae,’ the guilt of it, but where there is ‘reatus culpae,’ or sin considered with its guilt...”5 This latter quotation conveniently introduces us to what may well be considered as the consensus of Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

See here for the entire context of Owen's own comments, which will sustain Murray's rebuttal of Hodge. 

With this in mind, it is Winzer who fails to parse Murray rather than vice versa. See pages 36-37 of The Imputation of Adam's Sin, Murray writes:

In presenting and defending the representative view it is necessary to relieve it of some misrepresentation on the part of opponents and of certain extravagances on the part of proponents. With reference to the latter, as will be shown later in this series of studies, the representative view is not bound up with the assumption that posterity is involved only in the poena of Adam’s sin and not in the culpa. It is not to be supposed that only realism can hold to the imputation of the culpa of Adam’s transgression. Furthermore, the representative view is not to be loaded with the distinction between reatus culpae and reatus poenae which the older Reformed theologians rejected and which they characterized and criticized as papistical.

Note the part in italics in which Murray affirms the very thing for "representationalists" - in whose company Murray numbered himself - that Hodge denies: the imputation of the culpa.

More importantly, note the part underlined in which Murray agrees that there are not two "things" imputed. Murray affirms that culpa and poenae are inseparable, the very thing which Hodge denies! Winzer has gotten the matter entirely backwards. You can't make this stuff up. Murray also repeats this sentiment on page 80:

...of more importance for the subject in hand is the way in which Reformed theologians conceived of the relations of culpa, reatus, and poena and, most particularly, their insistence that there can be no poena or, for that matter, no reatus poenae apart from culpa.

What Winzer asserts in various places is that Murray is arguing is exactly opposite of what Murray argues. It would have behooved Winzer to simply read Murray's book (as well as the others I had mentioned). If this seems short, it is only because Winzer has been so quick to misrepresent Murray and so slow to acknowledge his error. 

Were it not for this misrepresentation, the situation would otherwise be rather amusing. In juxtaposition to the title of a post I linked to earlier, this one might have been appropriately named "Representationalist Misrepresentation of the Representationalist View on Original Sin"!

I take the above to be a fair outline of where and why I think Winzer has wrongly depicted Hodge, Murray, and "the divines." One can find similar issues in Winzer's exegesis of Hodge here.

Now, leaving Winzer aside, what motivated Hodge's deviation from the Reformed tradition? One possibility is that Hodge assumes that one can only be "culpable" for sin if that which is imputed is a sin he committed as a person. If so, this is not what the Reformers, following Augustine, thought. I mention this in particular because of a statement made by the person who wanted to ask me some questions. He wrote:

According to the common Reformed understanding of imputation, the progeny of Adam receive reatus poenae (liability to receive punishment) and reatus culpae (liability because of sin), but the cause (the sin, the culpae) belongs personally to Adam, whereas the poenae is given to Adam and his progeny, because both Adam and his progeny share in the liability (the reatus).

Adam is indeed the only person who "personally" sinned in the garden, but he is not the only person "culpable" for said sin. For Adam's progeny (Christ excepted) sinned in him. Realists and representationalists alike agree with this explanation for why infants are culpable for the sin imputed to them (contra Hodge). Their explanations as to the nature of the "participation" are different, of course, but this is the idea behind what is meant by the idea we "participated" in Adam's sin: we, his progeny who now exist as distinct persons from Adam, nevertheless [culpably and participatively] sinned in him.

Another point: Hodge's apparent reasoning - based on Hutchinson's book (which is still, I maintain, the fairest and best introduction to these issues) - is that Christ is not culpable for sin which He did not commit as a person. That is, Christ is not culpable [for our sin]. 

Yet, Hodge argues, our sin is "imputed" to Christ. In other words, Hodge is reading back how he thinks "imputation" works between the last Adam and those with whom He is united into how "imputation" works between the first Adam and those with whom he is united. If Christ is not culpable, neither are we. So goes the argument.

If so, though, it begs the question. As I argue in one of my responses to Winzer, the relationship between the two appears to be inverse, not parallel. Even if the following does not completely establish this thesis, it should be enough by way of response to Hodge's reasonings.

Grace - works
Life - death
Righteousness - sin
Into the last Adam - Out of the first Adam
Etc.

See here for my own take. Just as the concepts are opposite, so too with logical ordering (at least in some respects). For example, depravity of nature is indeed a punishment which is logically consequent to immediate imputation. Hodge is right about this.

But imagine if such were logically parallel in the case of soteriology! Regenerative change of nature would then be logically consequent to imputation of Christ's righteousness. That would mean we come to faith, are justified, and are then regenerated. But this is Arminianism - for how did we come to faith in the first place apart from regeneration? 

Ironically, Hodge's aim to defend the graciousness of the covenant of grace fails in proportion to his inability to contrast it to the covenant of works. One can find more on this in Hutchinson's book, as what I am saying has been noted by the likes of Landis and Dabney already.

Now, realists and representationalists quite agree that Christ is not culpable for sin which He did not commit as a person. That is, Christ is not culpable. But Hodge seems to miss is the point that another reason Christ is not culpable is that He was never "in" the first Adam and, thus, never [culpably and participatively] sinned in Adam (unlike the rest of Adam's progeny). And this links back to what I said earlier.

Another question I was asked pertains to a question I myself asked of Winzer: what sort of "justice" does not take into account criminality and so forth when judging? Here is the question I was asked in response:

Your question itself seems to be begging one. I think that the nominalist (?; I can't remember if this is the term used for non-realists) view is that God’s justice does take into account criminality, but particularly that of Adam, not only of the one being punished. EDIT: So I guess your question is actually, What sort of justice does not take into account personal criminality?

When I asked Winzer this question, I had already disputed his nominalism in the first thread-link mentioned at the beginning of this post. Thus, my question was a carry-over, not question-begging, insofar as I had already laid out problems with nominalism. To clarify my question: "What sort of justice ascribes a crime without taking into account whether the person to whom it is ascribed participated in criminality in any sense?" One cannot consistently affirm that God does not lie when He ascribes a crime to those who have not participated in it. This is destructive teaching. 

Additionally, to reframe my question as about "personal" criminality seems to ironically beg the question in favor of Hodge, as I discuss above.

To those who may read this post or the disagreement between myself and Winzer and come away with questions: that is a healthy response. It took time for me to reach conclusions with which I am relatively satisfied, and I don't pretend to have everything figured out. What helps is to have humility rather than hubris as one follows through on reading scholarly and primary sources, all of which will explain the fine distinctions and key matters better than I have and at more leisure than I have present time to extensively defend.