Federal headship versus seminal headship

[Pergamum]

Regarding the transmission of Adam's sin to his posterity, what is the history of the two positions of federal headship versus seminal (natural) headship and how are each of these positions represented in Reformed thought?

Were the reformers overwhelmingly federal, or do some also advocate the seminal headship position?

Does Romans 5 irrefutably teach the federal position or can one who holds to the seminal position make sense of the contrast between Adam and Christ.

In Westminster 6:3 it says:

They being the root of all 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 ordinary generation.

Why was this word "conveyed" chosen and was there any argument in the minutes about the phrasing of 6:3?

---------- Post added at 04:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:08 PM ----------

Is it best to say that, "Adam, in addition to his natural headship, was also the federal head of our race" thus including the truths of both theories?

 

[toddpedlar]

If I recall correctly (my books are packed up in boxes as we transfer book-cases from one bedroom in our house to another) Berkhof details the various Adamic headship positions in his Systematic... if that's not correct, then perhaps I am remembering reading those summaries in Hodge's systematic. Either way, I can't check to be sure, but I am fairly certain that the different options are discussed in some detail in one of the two of those works (or possibly both)

 

[Peairtach]

Dabney is critical of distinctions between "immediate" and "mediate" imputation i.e. either that transmitted depravity leads to or justifies imputed guilt, or that imputed guilt leads to depravity. He believed that both guilt is imputed and depravity is transmitted at the same time.

I sustain my position, then, that this distinction between
" mediate," and " immediate " imputation should never have
been made, by showing that it causelessly aggravates the difficulties
of the awful doctrine of original sin, exaggerating needlessly
the angles of a subject which is, at best, sufficiently
mysterious; that the arguments by which the immediate imputation
must be sustained misrepresent the doctrines of the
spiritual union and justification; and especially, that it is false
to the facts of the case, in a mode the counterpart of Placseus'.
It represents the child of Adam as having a separate, undepraved,
personal existence, at least for an instant; until from
innocent, it becomes depraved by God's act, as a penal consequence
of Adam's guilt imputed as peccatum alienum solely. *
But in fact, man now never has any personal existence at all,
save a depraved existence. As he enters being condemned, so
he enters it depraved. This over-refinement thus leads us to
an error in the statement of fact, which matches that resulting
from the opposite scheme. Does not this show very clearly,
that the distinction should never have been made ?

See pp 340-351 of his Systematic Theology

http://dabneyarchive.com/Systematic Theology/Lecture 29 - Originial Sin.pdf

 

[JoannaV]

Staley preached on that passage in Sep 2011; sermon's available online... (Unless your main question is regarding the history of the positions?)

 

[louis_jp]

According to one writer, at least:

“Many are the disputes and great the difficulties about this matter…. Some deny the imputation of guilt, and some the corruption of nature; and because they cannot comprehend the way and manner of its conveyance, destroy original sin itself. Others, that grant both, yet puzzle themselves and their readers with strange assertions: Some holding that the soul is propagated from the parents even as the body is, and therefore no wonder that a defiled soul should beget another such: Others, who hold the souls of men to be immediately created by God, affirm that it contracts pollution by being infused into a polluted body. But yet, the absurdities that will follow upon all these ways are so many, so very gross and palpable, that such hypotheses, instead of satisfying must needs only disquiet and torment an inquisitive mind….

“Original sin may be either the guilt of the first transgression imputed to us, or the corruption of nature inherent in us, to which corruption nothing more is required than the loss of God’s image in an active subject….

“That Adam’s sin is imputed unto us, so far as thereby to make us liable to eternal death and damnation, results not from his being our natural, but our federal head. Adam’s sin is imputed to our condemnation, only because we covenanted in him, and not merely because we descended from him….

“Many perplexed disputes there are, how we became so totally depraved, and whence we derived that corruption…. It must again be remembered that the loss of God’s image, that is of all that grace and holiness where with our natures were primitively endowed, is the true and only ground of all original corruption and depravation. Men’s natures are not now become sinful by putting anything into them to defile them, but by taking something from them, which should have preserved them holy….

“And therefore, when we say that Adam communicated to his posterity a corrupted nature, it must not be understood as if that nature which we received were infected with any vicious inclinations or habits… but the meaning is that Adam… did not communicate to us the image of God.

“The loss of this image of God was part of that death threatened in the covenant of works…. Adam being our federal head, and we disobeying in him, God doth justly deprive us of this image, that thereby also he might execute upon us the spiritual death threatened in the covenant of works, which covenant we broke in our representative. And this I take to be the true account of the corruption of our nature. It is a curse threatened in the covenant…”

(Ezekiel Hopkins, Doctrine of the Two Covenants).

 

[Pergamum]

Thanks Joanna, I was more interested in hearing the history. Especially if any denied federal headship and only held to natural headship.