The Fundamentals
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Observe that Paul goes beyond the statement of any un inspired Jewish writers — 1. In asserting that Adam and not Eve is the one through whom sin entered into the race. 2 . That, in some sense, when Adam sinned, "all sinned”, and in his sinning “all were made” ((careorá^o-av, stood down or constituted) “sinners” (Rom. 5:19). The apostle here means, doubtless, that all the race was seminally in Adam as its progenitor, and that Adam by the process of heredity handed down to his descendants a depraved nature. He can scarcely mean that each individual was actually in person in Adam. If Adam had not sinned and thus depraved and corrupted the fountain head of the race, the race itself would not have been the heir of sin and the reaper of its fruits, sorrow, pain, and death. 5 . That in the introduction of sin into the race by its progenitor the race itself was rendered helpless to extricate itself from sin and death. This the apostle asserts over and over again and has already demonstrated before he reaches the parallelism between Adam and Christ. “That every mouth may be stopped and all the world brought under the judgment of God” ; “because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (3:19, 20). THE ESSENCE AND NATURE OF SIN This brings us to ask, What constituted the essence or core of sin, as Paul saw it? Modern evolutionists emphasize the upward tendency of all things, and so sin is regarded by them as merely a step in the upward progress of the race; that is, sin is “good in the making”. Christian Scientists go still farther and regard all pain and evil as merely imaginary creations of abnormal minds.* There is no actual evil, no real pain, say they. Does either of these views find endorse ment in Paul? It must be noted that Paul nowhere gives ♦See “Science and Health.'
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