Knight
Puritan Board Freshman
Elsewhere on the board, I saw an endorsement for Murray's book "Imputation of Adam's Sin." What are the main "problems" with Murray's views?
I'll try to address this more over the weekend. In short, I think he is only able to push back the problem with Charles Hodge's view one extra step:
"The members of posterity cannot be conceived of as existing when Adam trespassed. To posit any such supposition is to contradict the meaning of conception and generation as the divinely constituted means for the origin of all members of the race except the first pair. Yet all the members of the race were contemplated by God as destined to exist; they were foreordained to be and the certainty of their existence was thus guaranteed. It is important in this connection to bear in mind that as thus contemplated by God they were contemplated no otherwise than as members of the race in solidaric union with Adam and therefore as having sinned in him. In other words, they are not conceived of in the mind and purpose of God except as one with Adam; they are not contemplated as potentially but as actually one with Adam in his sin. And this proposition is basic to all further thought on the question" (Murray, The Imputation of Adam's Sin, pgs. 90ff.)
The key here is that Murray rejects a real participation and affirms nominalism: there is no correspondence between reality and what God contemplates about reality. According to Murray, we do not really participate in Adam's sin because we did not in any sense exist. Whereas Hodge nominalistically imputed guilt to Adam's progeny without even allowing that they participated at all in Adam's sin, Murray merely pushes the problem back one step by nominalistically imputing culpability to Adam's progeny without even allowing that they really existed to really participate in the culpable Adamic act.
This seems important; surely in the 160-odd years since the thesis and rejoinder, someone took this up?
While I am no expert, I'll venture a few comments since you were looking for a recommendation. George Hutchinson's book on "The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterian Theology" (link) is a great book (acknowledged by everyone on all sides of this discussion) that overviews different views and discussions on original sin between ~1830-1960. This is where I learned of Baird, his work (link), and his dispute with Charles Hodge. The book also covers John Murray and others.
Baird wrote "The Elohim Revealed," wherein he defended what Hutchinson calls a "realist" view of original sin (similar to but distinct from that of W. G. T. Shedd; a more defensible view, in my opinion). Charles Hodge responded to Baird's book with a review, and after Baird wrote a rejoinder to Hodge (i.e. the link in the earlier post), Hodge seemingly gave up further response. Baird and other authors (like Robert Landis, link) pretty much level Hodge's views on original sin, which can be summarized in Hodge's statement that "Imputation does not imply a participation of the criminality of the sin imputed" (Hodge, Theology, Vol. II, p. 194). Baird, Landis, and the Reformed tradition (to this point in history) are against Hodge on this point, to say nothing of who in the Reformed tradition would also count as a realist.
Now, another person Hutchinson mentions in his book is Henry Thornwell, a theologian Hutchinson also puts in the "Realist School" (which includes Shedd and Baird). Thornwell wrote a critique of Baird's realism and, perhaps, his former views (link), a critique which probably was written later than Hutchinson seems to think (cf. pages 531-534 here). To answer your question, then, if I had to point to one resource that seems to face up to Baird and the implications of his realism as written in "The Elohim Revealed" and his rejoinder to Hodge I linked earlier, it would probably be Thornwell's critique. That said, I myself still lean towards Baird's view and believe modifications can be made to them to avoid some of Thornwell's criticisms (some of which seem just). But the Reformed, realist view of original sin does seem to have fallen out of favor. I haven't read many try to improve on Baird, Shedd, etc.
I'm trying to make some headway towards this in a slow way. Oliver Crisp discusses Shedd in a book I'm currently reading (link). I'm reading this book on original sin by Ian McFarland, which engages Augustinian differences from, say, Maximus (and as I've been reading on Easter Orthodoxy, I realize how little engagement with them I've seen from a Reformed perspective). Lastly, the one person I have talked to about many of these issues is a SBC guy called Ken Hamrick, who used to have a website but I haven't been able to contact for a while. You can read some of his old posts on SBC Voices, but I mention him only because he is as knowledgeable on this subject - especially in terms of historical theology - as I've had the pleasure to talk to (e.g. link, link, link), and he pointed me in the right direction on several of the points I mention above. I've seen something of a manuscript he's worked on, and I hope he is able to publish it at some point.