Jeremiah

What is baffling to me, having read John Murray’s book The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, is how federal headship has stopped being a theory for how sin passes from one generation to another after Adam and Eve sinned (and correspodingly why Christ’s birth is unique) to a theology addressed with hiearchies in earthly relationships. Federal headship simply means that Adam as the first man made a decision that effected and affected the future of humanity. Since his wife sinned with him arguing that only Adam’s sin is imputed to future generations is splitting hairs. Even Murray assumed that a federal or representative imputation still worked through natural imputation. In other words, even if Adam’s status as representative meant his sin was imputed to future generations he still had to have children with Eve before that was going to happen.

The usual explanation for the woman’s usurping role is in “because you have listened to your wife”. I find this argument dubious simply because the emphasis is not on Eve usurping her role but Adam heeding the voice of his wife rather than God’s warning. Both Adam and Eve attempt to pin the blame for their actions on another yet both are finally held responsible for their disobedience in eating the fruit. A lot of speculation about precisely how the man or woman sinned that expounds on gender roles seems wasteful to me because it finally is locating sin in some place other than ignoring God’s warning about eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Now I have heard men try to argue that the sin nature is not passed through the woman and in response to that I proposed the following scenario: human cloning is successfully obtained and a clone of a woman is developed who then undergoes a sex change. Does this man then have grounds to claim he was born without a sin nature? Would anyone buy that or would that seem like special pleading? Since Luke tells us Jesus was born of a virgin hamartology was concerned with explaining how and why it was necessary beyond the mystery of the incarnation (i.e. why for our sake it was necessary).

I think federal headship is being conscripted by complementarians to solve a social and political problem the doctrine was never even designed to address. If the doctrine helps you understand why salvation is through Christ alone then you’re understanding the doctrine properly. If you employ the doctrine to establish a social or political agenda in the here and now then it smells like a bad kind of special pleading.

Sorry if this is too long but the application of imputation in theology has been a hobby of mine and I have been disappointed by how doctrines related to it have been appropriated to deal with things it wasn’t designed to deal with.