The Christadelphian October 1953, John Carter

“Adam’s Sin and Baptism”

The following under the address “Romford” only, and signed by “T. Seeker”, has come to hand:

“Dear Sir,—In your Mag. you quote on page 247—T. Williams says ‘federally we are all under Adam’s sin and are baptized to remove the condemnation’. Page 248 you quote Robert Roberts—‘The sentence of death which we inherit from Adam is continently (sic) annulled in baptism’. This puzzles me and probably others. Where is the difference? Please explain in next issue.”

Presumably “T. Seeker” stands for Truth seeker. But Truth Seeker should not thus hide his identity, but should come out frankly. It is a reasonable attitude for Editors to ignore communications whose authorship is hidden by a barricade of anonymity. Howbeit, we will presume the writer is seeking truth, and that although he addresses us as “Dear Sir”, he knows more of the subject and the disputations on it than might be expected from one who uses that mode of address.

Where is the puzzle in the statements quoted? T. Williams taught that Adam’s sentence extends to each of his descendants as a personal sentence, and that this sentence holds one in the grave unless it is cancelled by baptism into Christ. He taught that in addition to the sentence we also inherit mortality and a nature prone to sin. He taught that while the first—the sentence—is cancelled at baptism, the nature will not be changed until one is accepted at the judgment seat.

On the other hand Dr. Thomas and R. Roberts taught that what we inherit from Adam is only a mortal and sinful nature. There is nothing about that inheritance which holds in the grave if God wills to raise anyone. As Dr. Thomas says in Elpis Israel: “Having attained the maturity of their nature, men become accountable and responsible creatures. At this crisis, they may be placed by the divine arranging in a relation to His word. It becomes to them a Tree of Life, inviting them to ‘take, and eat and live for ever’. If, however, they prefer to eat of the world’s forbidden fruit, they come under the sentence of death in their own behalf. They are thus doubly condemned. They are ‘condemned already’ to the dust as natural born sinners; and, secondarily, condemned to a resurrection to judgment for rejecting the gospel of the kingdom of God: by which they become obnoxious to ‘the Second Death’.”

Our inheritance from Adam is a mortal sinful nature which will be removed by that change after judgment which Paul speaks of as the transforming of the bodies of our humiliation to the likeness of the body of his glory. Everyone knows perfectly well that the necessity to mortify the flesh, to crucify the flesh, to make no provision for the desires of the flesh, continues as long as life lasts. Baptism is into Christ for the remission of sins. Its very form, as a symbol of death, is an acknowledgment of the fact that death reigns because of sin, whether sin in Eden or sin at any time since. Jesus could respond to John’s preaching that man was mortal (“all flesh is grass”) and so recognize God’s righteous appointment by submitting to baptism to fulfil all righteousness. It foreshadowed the cross when he declared God’s righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, and this is effective for us “through faith” “in his blood” as Paul declares. But that is a very different thing from T.W’s idea of removing a sentence which alienates and which leads to the further idea that the sinless son of God was an alien to God’s law until his baptism.

The phrase “sentence of death which we inherit from Adam”, as used by R.R. is simply “the death we inherit from Adam”, and from this he said: “We are not delivered till mortality (that is, constitutional deathfulness) is swallowed up of life”. As he said on another occasion: “The subject of our connection with Adam and how we are affected by our own sins, is really very simple, but has become obscured in certain quarters by the clouds raised 20 years ago by the mischievous Renunciationist controversy . . . Perverse ingenuity of the lawyer type can always get round the most squarely stated truth, and jump with impish agility from the figurative use of the literal to the literal use of the figurative, as the exigency of partizan polemics may require . . . On the particular subject of your letter, your own definition is all sufficient—that the sins forgiven us at baptism are our own sins, of which alone we are guilty, and that the evil springing from our connection with Adam will not be cured till death is swallowed up of victory.”

In 1874 he wrote: “Condemnation in Adam means, therefore, that we are mortal in Adam: mortal in the physical constitution—the organization”. And again: “Suffering the Adamic condemnation is a question of physical constitution”. “This mortality is our condemnation in Adam.” R. Roberts never wrote anything different from this.

The operative word in the quotation reproduced from R.R. in our correspondent’s letter, is “contingently”. Actually in his letter he spells it “continently”—and perhaps this indicates he is not familiar with the word and so does not know its meaning. A contingent thing is one where there are dependent factors. In this case the removal of “condemnation” by a change of nature depends upon a faithful walk in the Truth. Baptism is the first step.

The death we inherit from Adam is not removed at baptism but steps are taken along a way which, if followed to the end, will bring eternal life. Baptism is essential, because of divine appointment, to the union with Christ in whom is vested the power to give us life. Let us get at facts, and avoid that “perverse ingenuity of the lawyer type” which “jumps with impish agility” from literal to figurative.

Perhaps it will help readers to realize that T. Williams did recognize a real difference in his teaching from the fact that when bro. C. C. Walker re-stated the truth which has always been held since the days of Dr. Thomas on the subject of our inheritance in Adam, under the heading Condemnation and its Removal, T.W. felt it necessary to print pages of what he called “Rectification” and in a letter to bro. Walker included in the pamphlet Adamic Condemnation accused him of “shameful apostasy”. Such language indicates a difference of view.

In conclusion to this answer, might we reproduce an illustration. From memory, we think Dr. Thomas used it, but bro. Walker certainly did, and we used it ourselves in Chicago. T. Williams thinks of the human race as divided into two groups—In Adam and In Christ—and he would draw two circles side by side to illustrate it; men pass from one circle to another and are never in both circles at the same time. Bible teaching, however, would be accurately illustrated by a large circle and inside it a smaller circle. The larger one represents all in Adam, which covers all his descendants: the smaller one represents those “in Christ” who are by descent in Adam (how else can we be in him?) and so remain until they are given immortality and pass from the death-stricken lot of all men today, to the freedom of the revealed sons of God.

Editor.