While teaching a class about Bible doctrines in my church this past summer, I discussed why Adam’s sin is imputed to the human race. In summary, theologians have advanced two possible explanations: first, God imputes sin to all men because Adam is the genetic ancestor of all men; second, God imputes sin to all men because Adam is the covenental representative of all men. In my teaching, I favored the explanation that Adam is the covenental representative, and I probably still hold to that understanding. But I also said that it which explanation one believes doesn’t really affect the rest of his theology. I was wrong. [1]

I knew that Augustine first advanced the seminal explanation of imputation and that the representative explanation was advanced later, but I never thought about why the explanation had changed. Reading Perry Miller recently, I realized that the change was part of a much larger theological change, which was itself part of a much larger societal change.

The covenant theologians . . . were endeavoring to mark off an area of human behavior from the general realm of nature, and within it to substitute for the rule of necessity a rule of freedom. . . . Certainty in human affairs was to rest not upon inexplicable decrees but upon the seal that attested the word covenant and insured the fulfillment of covenant terms.

This is to say that the federal theology was essentially part of a universal tendency in European thought to change social relationships from status to contract, that it was one expression of late Renaissance speculation, which was moving in general away from the idea of feudalism . . . . There can be no doubt that these theologians inserted the federal idea into the very substance of divinity, that they changed the relation even of God to man from necessity to contract, largely because contractualism was becoming increasingly congenial to the age and in particular to Puritanism. If we are to seek ultimate causes for the federal doctrine in historical terms, we must undoubtedly resort to such considerations, yet there are two cautions to be observed in correlating too glibly the federal theology with the drift of contemporaneous social thinking. First, the authors themselves reached their conclusion by starting from the words of the Bible and deducing consequences . . .; they may have been driven unwittingly to satisfy the interests of their class, of merchants and capitalists, but they had to observe the limits imposed by their authority, and by their instruments for interpreting it. They could develop the covenant only so far as the Bible permitted, or could be made to permit. . . .[2]

The shift in the explanation of imputation seems to fit this explanation of change in theology. European society was shifting from medieval feudalism to modern societal/political structures. The basis of that shift was a change “from status to contract”; in other words, what determined men’s relationships to one another was not what class they were born into but what agreements (economic/political) they made with one another. This change was reflected in theology. Though their theology came from the Augustinian/Calvinistic tradition, the Puritan’s theology was not Calvinism. Their understanding of the covenant idea at the heart of their theological system fundamentally changed everything. (Somewhere in Puritan theology is the seed of Arminianism.) Thus, the explanation of imputation also shifted. To people in the midst of a shift from status to contract, it was more persuasive that God held them accountable because Adam their representative had broken his contract with God than that God held them accountable because they had descended from Adam.

“Seems,” I say, because I have no proof. History is not deduction from abstract principles as I’ve done above; deduction is merely an expression of what one thinks history ought to have been. To prove that the explanation of imputation changed, one would need to examine the theological literature of the time. Most broadly, confessions and catechisms would provide evidence of the theology of large groups. More specifically, theological treatises would provide more extensive evidence about specific theologians. Most importantly, sermons would show how individual ministers and congregations understood and applied the theology about imputation.[3]

Leaving then an unsubstantiated idea about historical theology, let me come back to the teaching about imputation in a small Baptist church in Massachusetts. First, I was in error to think it didn’t matter which explanation of the imputation of sin I used. The federal and seminal views are actually representatives of two significantly different theological systems. Second, one should be cautious about believing that his theology is absolute, i.e., that it comes purely from the Bible, independent of time, place, circumstance, or society. To suggest that theology is culturally-dependent is not to suggest that it is culturally-determined. If one really believes that God’s truth is absolute, he ought to be candid enough to admit that his hermeneutic is relative.

1. The following is what I wrote about the explanation of imputation:

   Understanding that Adam’s sin has been imputed to all men, it is reasonable to ask why all men are accountable for the sin of one man. Two explanations have been advanced for the imputation of sin. The first argues that all men are guilty in Adam because all men are descendants of Adam and particularly because all men were present in Adam. This view is based upon the idea of family unity seen in the Old Testament; e.g. God visited the sins of the father upon the children, and God ordered all of Achan’s descendents killed for Achan’s sin. It is also based on the racial unity of mankind as created by God “of one blood” (Acts 17:26). The primary support for this view, however, is a reasoning process similar to that used by the writer of Hebrews. He argues that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek because he was “in the loins of his father” Abraham when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek (Heb. 7:9-10). Thus just as Levi committed an action since he was in the loins of his great-grandfather, so too all men committed Adam’s sin since they were in the loins of the father of their race. This view has much to recommend it, especially its widespread biblical support and its emphasis on mankind actually committing Adam’s sin with him.

   Another view, however, seems to be closer to the meaning of Romans chapter five itself. The passage represents Adam as the head of the human race, not primarily as the source of humanity but as the representative of humanity. Adam stood in the place of mankind, having entered into the covenant with God. When he broke the covenant with God, God imputed his sin to him and to those he represented. This idea of representation is further seen in the comparison of Adam to Christ. Dissimilar in every respect save one, Adam and Christ both represent the human race (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45, 47, 49), and Christ’s representation of humanity is the means of the substitutionary atonement. (This is not to forget that Christ is not only the representative of the human race, he is the source of a new race of people, Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:11-13.)

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2. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 398–399. Miller’s second caution is that the Puritans who introduced the change into theology could not, of course, know the full effects of the changes over the long term. ↩
3. I can’t even begin such an investigation, but I did look at the Westminster Standards (1647). The Westminster Confession states, “They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation” (6.3). The reference to them as the “root of mankind” and their descendants “by ordinary generation” would seem to favor the seminal explanation. The Larger Catechism, however, gives a fuller explanation: “The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in that first transgression” (22). The language about sinning “in him” could be an echo of the language of Hebrews and thus be an indication of a seminal view, but the general idea seems to indicate a federal view. The Shorter Catechism omits the language about Adam “as a public person” but retains the idea of the covenant being made for both Adam and his posterity (16). The language about sins being imputed to Adam’s descendants “by ordinary generation” is probably intended to make it clear that because of the Virgin Birth sin was not imputed to Christ. I conclude, then, that the Westminster Standards use the federal explanation of imputation. ↩