The Radical Fault of the New Orthodoxy [pp. 353-367]

356 THE RADICAL FAULT OF THE 1VEW ORTHODOXY. [Dec.,
notion that the universals, genus and species, are not mere concepts of the mind with a foundation in reality, but real beings inll
themselves, outside of individual existences.
Or, in another mode of apprehension, it is the notion that
souls are derived from souls as bodies are from bodies. So our
souls are not immediately created by God, but mediately in
the creation of the soul of Adam, from which all the souls of his
offspring are derived. Thus the intellect and will of each infant are inherited through its parents and ancestors from Adam,
its whole spiritual and immortal nature has been transmitted by
descent, and the sin with which it was infected by Adam's transgression has come down with the nature.
This extreme realism, and also this philosophical notion of the
mediate creation of the rational soul, are antique idols of the den
which deserve no better place than a shelf in the museum of old
metaphysical curiosities.
Moreover, they do not serve their purpose in the least.
Whatever else may come down by heredity, moral accountability does not. No matter if Adam were the whole human
race, genus and species had no consciousness, no free will, no
spontaneous activity, as such. The singular individual Adam
thought,.willed, and acted, was responsible, sinned, and merited
condemnation in his individual existence. The person is the
principle of imputability in respect to moral acts. The soul of
Adam was not a multiple composed of a collection of many souls,
even if it were multiplicable. If the souls of all men were in his
soul they were not existing actually, but only virtually and in
potency. Distinct and personal accountability can only begin
with a distinct capacity and exercise of the acts of understanding
and willing. If Adam did really make our nature totally depraved, and we must therefore receive it in this condition from our
parents, that is our misfortune, but not our fault. We are no more
blamable for our native depravity than for inherited ugliness, deformity, sickliness, and stupidity. In case our depraved nature
necessitates in us those acts, and those only, which would be sins
in a normal condition, they are no more sins and have no demerit.
They are like the acts of lunatics, idiots, and irrational animals.
The only reasonable doctrine is that God creates immediately
each single, rational soul. He cannot make anything which is
not good, and the Calvinist who admits the doctrine of creation ism will have a troublesome task to explain how a soul, by be coming the form of a human body, can contract guilt and become
totally depraved.