The Relevance of John Locke’s View

on Personal Identity Over Time to

Edwards and Adamic Imputation

Adam C. Parker

Introduction

Orthodox and classic Christianity always will have its opponents. This is due to the nature of humanity, which tends to reject the sovereign God in every possible way. Thus, it is not surprising when men choose to deify themselves and denigrate the God who made them. In the 18^th Century, Jonathan Edwards fought off such enemies of the faith. At this particular time, these people attacked the concept of original sin. Particularly – they asked – is it fair that I am responsible for a sin that Adam (the first man) committed? It is within Edwards’ answer to this incredible challenge that we find the thought of John Locke. Though in the final analysis we will see that Edwards’ answer trods its own path never before followed. We will find that his answer actually stems from an eventual rejection of Locke’s view of personal identity. It is nonetheless crucial to grasp how this intellectual giant answered the challenges he encountered.

The Challenge

Attacks by Dr. John Taylor, a liberal Arminian scholar from England, prompted the writings of perhaps the two greatest Reformed writings of the 18^th Century: The Freedom of the Will and Original Sin. Both of these were written while Edwards ministered among the Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It has been said by Notre Dame scholar George Marsden that The Freedom of the Will, in and of itself, prevented and even diminished the spread of Arminianism in the American colonies for well over a hundred years. Further, he says, “its power…was a significant factor in the intellectual resilience and influence of Calvinism in America well into the nineteenth century” (Marsden 446).

In Dr. Taylor’s Attack, he charged that the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity is unjust and unreasonable for the rather simple reason that Adam and his posterity are not one and the same.

The Classic Responses

For the purposes of our present discussion, let us define the word “impute.” Romans 5:13 says, “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law.” The Greek word, which Paul uses in this particular passage, is ellogeo, which is translated “to reckon, attribute, impute, put on account.” In light of this, let us define imputation of sin as “that by which God regards an individual as a sinner.” The Christian church has held many different views of how or why Adamic sin is imputed to his offspring. Briefly, let us examine the different possible theories of imputation offered throughout church history.

Pelagians and Socinians

By Berkhof’s estimation, the Pelagians, as well as the Socians deny any real connection between Adam’s sin and our own. For them, the only connection between Adam’s sin and the sin of the remainder of humanity is that of an evil example, which we all emulate, though we are free to stop sinning, if only we would choose to stop. Each individual is regarded as sinful as soon as they commit an actual sin in practice.

Semi-Pelagians and Early Arminians

The Semi-Pelagians and some early Arminians believe that all human beings have inherited a natural inability from Adam, but that these human beings are not responsible for their inability, and thus, no guilt attaches to it. It may even be said, under this view, that God is in a way under obligation to provide a cure for it. The Wesleyan Arminians admit that this inborn corruption also involves guilt.

The Federal Head

1) God ordained that in the pre-fall covenant, Adam would stand in, not only for himself, but also for his offspring. Thus, he was head of the race, not only in a physical/parental role, but also in a federal role.

2) The covenant commanded obedience, yet guaranteed that persistent perseverance for a certain period of time would be rewarded with a fixation of Adam’s state in one of permanent holiness and perfect happiness.

3) Obedience to the covenant would have resulted in a just claim to life eternal, not only for Adam, but also for his descendants. Thus, there were many benefits to the covenant, but there were also many risks which were involved.

4) Transgression of the covenant would (and did) result in the opposite of eternal life: eternal death. Just as the arrangement would result in life for his offspring, it also would (and did) result in eternal death to his offspring.

5) “In his right judgment, God imputes the guilt of the first sin, committed by the head of the covenant, to all those that are federally related to him. As a result, they are born in a depraved and sinful condition as well, and this inherent corruption also involves guilt.”

6) Only the “first sin of Adam, and not his following sins nor the sins of our other forefathers is imputed to us. Also, this teaching safeguards the sinlessness of Jesus” (Paraphrased & Quoted; Berkhof 241-243).

The Federal Head view tells us that God constituted humanity with one man as the “stand-in” or leader, upon whose decision humanity would rise or fall. Essentially, the Federal Head view says, God chose Adam to represent all of us. This view appeals to God’s right to constitute nature in whatever way He pleases.

Edwards’ View of Imputation

The Edwardsian assessment of Adamic Imputation can only be properly seen in light of 1) the previously discussed apologetic challenges from which his view arose, and 2) the Lockian view of personal identity, which Edwards rejected. The reason for Locke’s importance will become clearer once a brief investigation has been completed. However, it is helpful to have an understanding of the fact that Edwards looks, and sounds just like his predecessors within the Reformed tradition, with regard to imputation. In an unpublished sermon on Romans 5:12-21, we read:

As this place in general is plain and full, so the doctrine of the corruption of nature, as derived from Adam, and also the imputation of his first sin, are both clearly taught in it. The imputation of Adam’s one transgression is indeed most directly and frequently asserted.

In another unpublished manuscript on Luke 13:5, Edwards refers to Adam’s sin, saying that Adam was our “representative who stood in our room.” Here, we see in Edwards’ writings, a strong tendency to use the language of the traditional Reformed view of imputation. It is only when pressed about the unfairness of God’s so constituting the nature of humanity, that Edwards elaborates, and thus, distinguishes his views – in a sense – from his predecessors.

Locke’s View of Personal Identity

It is perhaps impossible for us to gauge the immense influence of John Locke upon the thought of the great Puritan genius, Jonathan Edwards. In order to do so, we would have to read, not only the hundreds of published sermons and books which we have available, but it would be best if we could also read the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of unpublished manuscripts which are, to this day, being compiled and transcripted by Edwardsian scholars at Yale.

One who is well versed in the writings of Edwards is aware of a strong influence that came in the form of the philosophical writings of John Locke, who died two years before Edwards was born. According to one of Edwards’ journals, he was so excited when he picked up An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding that as a teenager he read it through several times. As an empiricist, Locke did not believe in pre-existing notions or innate ideas. For Locke, all ideas are obtained either through the senses, or by reflection upon ideas – which still arrive via the sensory organs. This concept, in particular, impressed itself upon Edwards. Edwardsian scholars John Gerstner and Perry Miller believe that in many respects, Edwards “christianized” the somewhat secular thought of the British empiricist.

Locke believed that a person’s identity consisted in this: continuation of consciousness. As long as a person held preserved memories of their own past, with no break in consciousness, then that person’s identity could be established or held certain. To be sure, there are many other aspects to Lockean identity. For example, Locke believed that transmigration of the soul was possible. Transmigration is the idea that a person’s soul could leave their body, and become united to another body. The person’s identity would remain the same, however, since the person’s consciousness never ceases operation. Entire books could (and probably have been) be written on the subject, but for the present purposes, this short summary will do nicely.

One of the very first recorded writings of Edwards was in a writing entitled The Mind. Here, one quite plainly and simply sees the blunt, unapologetic influence of Locke. Edwards writes:

Well might Mr. Locke say that identity of person consisted in identity of consciousness; for he might have said that identity of spirit, too, consisted in the same consciousness. A mind or spirit is nothing else but consciousness, and what is included in it. The same consciousness is to all intents and purposes the very same spirit or substance, as much as the same particle of matter can be the same with itself at different times.

In this early writing in On The Mind, Edwards expresses a sympathetic tendency towards Locke’s view of personal identity. Here, one finds Edwards’ initial doctrine of personality, one that – as we shall see – Edwards eventually rejected en toto.

Edwards Rejects Lockean Personality

Before I begin with this next reading of Edwards, please forgive the length of the chosen quotation. Its contents are wholly relevant and extremely crucial to our understanding of Edwards’ own edition of personal identity.

Identity of person is what seems never yet to have been explained. It is a mistake that it consists in sameness or identity of consciousness, if by sameness of consciousness be meant having the same ideas hereafter that I have now, with a notion or apprehension that I had had them before, just in the same manner as I now have the same ideas that I had in time past by memory.

Here, Edwards has offered us a somewhat fair representation of the view he is about to reject. The quote continues:

It is possible without doubt in the nature of things for God to annihilate me, and after my annihilation to create another being that shall have the same in his mind that I have, and with the like apprehension that he had had them before in like manner as a person has by memory; and yet I be in no way concerned in it, having no reason to fear what that being shall suffer, or to hope for what he shall enjoy. Can anyone deny that it is possible, after my annihilation, to create two beings in the universe, both of them having my ideas communicated to them with such a notion of their having had them before, after the manner of memory, and yet be ignorant one of another? And in such case, will anyone say that both these are one and the same person, as they must be if they are both the same person with me? It is possible there may be two such beings, each having all the ideas that are now in my mind in the same manner that I should have by memory if my own being were continued, and yet these two beings not only be ignorant one of another, but also be in a very different state, one in a state of enjoyment and pleasure, and the other in a state of great suffering and torment…Will anyone say that [these], in such a case, [are] the same person with me, when I know nothing of [their] suffering and am never the better for [their] joys? (Gerstner 325-326)

There is one more piece to this puzzle, which has kindly been put in place by John Gerstner in volume 2 of his Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards. In his section on Edwardsian imputation, Gerstner quotes the above mentioned section of Edwards and then makes this crucial analysis:

It would seem that Edwards came to rest with respect to personal identity with the above doctrine that it is divinely constituted. It is closely related to the doctrine of continuous creation. Just as the only real difference between creation and providence is that creation is referred to the first time that God brought things into being, while providence is the term for all subsequent times, so the only difference between Adam’s sin and his posterity’s is that Adam’s is simply the first. His posterity’s sin is the same as his because their personal identity is the same, but it is the second, third, fourth etc. – a difference not in the thing itself but in the number of the thing (193).

For Jonathan Edwards, you and I were created as persons identified with Adam. In Edwards’ illustration, he is annihilated and two individuals with the same memories and consciousness that he had were created. Edwards argues persuasively that these two individuals would not be the same person, for they would not share consciousness but would instead live, one completely oblivious to the other. For Edwards, they would not be the same person, though they were identified with a particular person at one time: namely in the example, Jonathan Edwards. To be sure, this quote is not a refutation of Lockian personality, but is instead a rejection. Such a distinction is important, because it was not Edwards intention to refute, but instead to simply consider his definition inadequate.

What we find in the above-mentioned quote is a summary of Edwards’ thought that is concise and yet complex; the idea that our own personal identity is tied into the doctrine of continual creation. Writing about his own doctrine of continuous creation, Edwards wrote:

…God’s upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment… (193).

But how does this teaching intersect with personal identity and imputation? Each person is at each moment being created by God. This means that the only way that any individual exists is by divine appointment. “We are constantly being recreated. God is constantly constituting our identity. Why be surprised if God appointed an identity of the human race with a particular individual? God alone is the Creator and identifier of men” (197).

What we find here is that the reason why Locke’s personal identity is so important in that it is through Edwards’ rejection of it that we find his basis for how God might identify humanity with Adam and his first sin. Let us now turn our attention to how Edwards applied this teaching.

Edwards’ View of Imputation of Sin

Most of Edwards’ statements of this doctrine appear in his writings in Original Sin, though one can also find the vein of Edwardsian Personality running through other aspects of his writing. Primarily, one sees his deviation from the Reformed tradition with the example of the tree and its roots.

So root and branches being one, according to God’s wise constitution, the case in fact is, that by virtue of this oneness answerable changes or effects through all

the branches coexist with the changes in the root: consequently an evil disposition exists in the hearts of Adam’s posterity, equivalent to that which was exerted in his own heart, when he eat the forbidden fruit (Edwards 221).

In the context of this section of Original Sin, Edwards is stressing the fairness of the constitution of mankind, placing Adam as the root, and humanity as the tree that springs from that root. In a sermon on Revelation 19:2-3, Edwards stresses a person’s guilt, even if he is involved or has a hand in another’s sin. The question then arises, “did we have a hand in Adam’s sin?” According to Gerstner, “He goes on to prove not only that we had a hand in Adam’s sin but that it was our sin; we committed it.” George Parks Fisher comments regarding Edwards’ view, “The sin of apostasy is not theirs merely because God imputes it to them, but because it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them” (Fisher 284-303). If Fisher’s assessment holds, then Edwards’ view should not be regarded as a view of imputation but instead as a view of identity.

Listen to the undertones of Edwardsian Identity in the following quotation from his sermon on Romans 7:14:

Adam’s posterity came by the corruption of nature by God’s withholding his Spirit and image from them judicially for their breach of the first covenant. It is not derived down naturally but God withholds his Spirit from them in judgment for their first sin viz. for their eating the forbidden fruit…They are looked upon as having eaten the forbidden fruit as well as Adam. They transgressed in Adam and therefore are subject to the same judgment (Gerstner 327).

He here refers to us – Adam’s posterity – as having actually committed the sin of eating the first fruit. For Edwards, we have all eaten the forbidden fruit. We all – humanity as a whole – had our hand in Adam’s first sin. Gerstner comments: “Edwards [here] is clearly departing from the Reformed tradition fundamentally, and seems fully aware of it. Here the problem is not that the reformed tradition tended to be silent about the subject, but that the solution it offered did not satisfy Edwards.”

His enemies have argued that it is unfair for us to suffer because of the sin of Adam. From a strictly pragmatic perspective, there is little room to debate that Edwards’ proposition entirely eradicates his opponents’ objection, if in fact, his thesis that we are all identified with Adam and guilty of his first sin can be shown to accord with scripture. In one sense, however, Edwards does not desire to prove that his view of imputation is true, but only to show that this is a possible answer to the charge of unfairness.

Conclusion

Our reaction to Edwards’ view of imputation of sin is probably mixed. Some will appreciate his view for the sheer novelty and originality. Some will reject his view, arguing that it is based on conjecture and not enough on direct biblical statements. Others will choose to adopt his view based on the effectiveness with which it dispatches the charges of unfairness (if such an argument should even be considered valid!). One perfectly reasonable question which we could ask is, what did other Reformed theologians following Edwards, think of his idea? Arthur Crabtree put forth this criticism:

It tells us that two things are identical if God wills them to be so. It tells that if his teaching conflicted with its teaching he must be in error. Obviously [Edwards] had no such notion concerning the doctrine of personal identity. He was aware that it was different from ordinary reformed thinking but he did not think it inconsistent with…the Bible, but, in fact, most satisfactorily explained it.

By John Gerstner’s estimate, Charles Hodge looked at Edwards as an immediate imputationist, and thus, did not correctly understand Edwards’ view in order to critique it. He “does not seem to grasp the immediate immediacy of Jonathan Edwards….Adam’s act was not even immediately imputed to descendants, but was the descendants very own” (333). This criticism also holds true for John Murray, who “located Edwards between the immediate and mediate views of imputation” (333).

It would seem that Edwards has received little, if any criticism for his personal identification of Adam and his descendants. This means one of two things: 1) It could mean that few of those who came after Edwards looked deeply enough in his writings to see this doctrine, or 2) The doctrine itself was not a real issue with preceding theologians, since – though it was certainly a unique route to travel – its destination remained the same as the classical view that all of humanity suffers because of Adam’s first sin.

We should view and judge Edwards’ perspective in light of his intention in formulating this view. It would appear that Edwards saw himself as a champion of the classic Reformed doctrine of imputation. He did, however, perceive what could be considered a “weak spot” in the doctrine, which he saw himself as “safeguarding.” In this light, we should look at Edwards’ view as an addition or addendum to what was already an accurate and biblical perspective on humanity’s sinful condition. His view was not a replacement, nor was it challenge, but rather an addition. My primary rationale for adopting this assessment is based upon the many affirmations, which Edwards makes, favorable to the traditional view. If Edwards thought that his view should subvert or replace the traditional view, then surely he would have spoken against it or challenged its validity, yet one does not find such offensive statements in Edwards’ published works, to be sure. As I stated earlier, it would seem that Edwards saw his contribution as complementing, not subverting classic orthodox imputation.

With regard to this matter, the words of Scripture are always our roadmap, and our inerrant guide to knowing truth about God. As such, I close with the words of the Apostle Paul, our great theologian and forerunner:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous (Romans 5:12, 18-19; my emphasis).

Works Cited

Berkhof, Louis Systematic Theology. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).

Edwards, Jonathan The Works of Jonathan Edwards Volume I (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003).

Fisher, George, “The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards.” Discussions in History and Philosophy. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

Gerstner, John H. The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Volume 2 (Orlando: Ligonier, 1992).

Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. (Yale University, 2003).