Editor’s Preface
EDITOR’S PREFACE
This volume completes Johann Gerhard’s theological anthropology, begun in On Creation and Predestination (especially Commonplaces VIII and XI). Here Gerhard handles original sin, actual sins, and free choice.
These commonplaces first appeared in print in 1611,1 sometime after May 30, though the beginnings of these commonplaces can be traced to Gerhard’s participation in formal disputations.2 Beginning on February 5, 1607, Gerhard held monthly disputations in Coburg on theological topics, and the lists of theses for disputation were printed in advance. The disputations on original sin and free choice—two of the topics covered in the present volume—were held on May 21 and August 8, 1607. It appears that these disputations were printed in a collection: Gerhard’s Succinct and Select Aphorisms.3 Thus the Aphorisms on original sin and free choice are certainly a stage in the development of Gerhard’s Theological Commonplaces.
Following the example of the first article of the Formula of Concord, Gerhard attempts to navigate between saying that original sin is the substance of fallen man and saying that, as an accident of fallen man, original sin is not a deep or thorough corruption of human nature. While Gerhard’s emphasis is on the thorough, pervasive corruption of human nature by original sin, he also taught that some good had survived the fall into sin. These good things—such as the conscience, a natural sense of justice, the recognition that there is a Creator, and a certain degree of free choice—are what Gerhard calls “remnants of the image of God” or “remnants of freedom.”4 Gerhard was not the first to use this idea that some rubble or remnants of the image of God remained after the fall. Recent criticism has been aimed at Gerhard for his anthropology on this point. Yet in his 1633 Catholic Confession, his last major work of dogmatics, Gerhard is said to have abandoned the teaching that the remnants of the image of God had survived the fall and instead followed the lead of Balthasar Meisner, whose Sacred Anthropology had been published in 1619, not long after these sections of Gerhard’s Theological Commonplaces. In his later work, Gerhard also is reported to have adopted Meisner’s terminology, speaking of original righteousness neither as supernatural nor natural, but as “connatural,” and speaking of original sin not as an “accident” of the human substance but as “inherence” in the human substance.5
When discussing original sin, Robert Bellarmine argued that Adam’s sin was only imputed by God to the rest of the human race, but the inherent corruption of original sin was not propagated.6 Gerhard rejects this view of the transmission of original sin. Our sinful condition, even in infants, is real, not just imputed. Original sin comes down to us by carnal propagation, not by God’s imputation.7 Nevertheless, later Lutherans adopted the idea of the imputation of Adam’s sin to his descendants, possibly borrowing arguments from Reformed federal theology and appealing to Rom. 5:18–19 as a scriptural basis of the doctrine. In the later Lutheran view, God’s imputation of Adam’s sin is the basis for the corrupt, sinful state of each of Adam’s descendants. The reasoning is that just as the manner of justification from Christ is imputation, so the manner of condemnation from Adam must also be imputation.8 Heinrich Schmid thought Gerhard supported the imputation of Adam’s sin,9 but this is clearly not the case. In his Theological Commonplaces, his Catholic Confession, and his commentary on Romans, Gerhard repeatedly states that Adam’s sin was propagated to all his descendants by carnal generation (that is, by the physical processes of human reproduction). His consistent position is that Rom. 5:18–19 does not say that Adam’s sin was imputed to his descendants, and that guilt is a part of the definition of original sin “because of the evil propagated in us.”10 At the same time, Gerhard can use his opponent’s concepts in order to argue against them. Thus he occasionally uses the idea of the imputation of Adam’s sin and explains it as not being absurd in order to undermine Roman Catholic arguments meant to attack imputed justification.11
Gerhard again uses his opponents’ assumptions when discussing whether original sin affects infants in the womb. Imputation of sin from Adam is unnecessary when, with Gerhard, one holds that the souls of children are generated from their parents.12 A corrupt tree generates corrupt fruit; corrupt parents beget corrupt children in both body and soul. But imputation of sin from Adam becomes more necessary if one holds that the souls of children are created anew for each individual. Imputation then leads to inherent sinfulness, explaining why children are born with the corruption of original sin in body and soul. Gerhard does not hold to the individual creation of souls separate from one’s generation from his parents, but this is how many of the medieval Scholastics and Gerhard’s chief opponent, Bellarmine, thought about the soul’s beginning. As a result, the Scholastics also had to discuss when the soul was joined with the fetus in the mother’s womb. This is the question of when “ensoulment” occurs.13 Delayed ensoulment was not Gerhard’s position, since he made clear that the soul is generated from parents. Yet he uses Bellarmine’s terms to argue against him. Keeping the greater scope of Gerhard’s teaching in mind can help identify where he is using his opponents’ premises to argue against them, thus preventing misconstruals of Gerhard’s teaching.
The publication of Gerhard’s Commonplaces could not happen without the cooperation of a skilled and dedicated team. The Rev. Heath R. Curtis served as assistant editor for this volume. The Rev. Dr. Richard Dinda, the original translator, is to be thanked for helping to make this project come about in the first place. Dawn Mirly Weinstock has served as production editor for the series from the beginning. Many other colleagues, both within and outside of Concordia Publishing House, have given their advice and support. Without their help, this series, the first large-scale translation of Gerhard’s great work, would be impossible. To God alone be the glory.
Benjamin T. G. Mayes
1 Johann Gerhard, Locorum Theologicorum … Tomus Secundus: In quo continentur haec Capita: 9. De Creatione & Angelis. 9. De Providentia. 10. De Electione & Reprobatione. 11. De Imagine Dei in homine ante lapsum. 12. De peccato Originali. 13. De peccatis Actualibus. 14. De Libero Arbitrio (Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1611).
2 On the practice of disputations in the era of Lutheran Orthodoxy, see Kenneth G. Appold, Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung: Das theologische Disputationswesen an der Universität Wittenberg zwischen 1570 und 1710 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).
3 Johann Gerhard, Aphorismi Succincti Et Selecti, In Viginti Tribus Capitibus, totius Theologiae nucleum continentes: Ad Usum Disputationum Scholasticarum Accommodati & conscripti (Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1611; repr., [Jena]: typis Joh. Jacobi Bauhöferi, [1663]), fol. G4v–H2v. This volume was published to provide an overview of theology for students, and it contains the theses of the disputations that Gerhard held at Coburg, though the list of “disputants” in the Aphorisms does not match the names of the respondents on the title pages of the previously printed disputation theses (see the 1663 edition, fol. b3r–b3v, [b4]r). Since Gerhard apparently had not held a disputation on actual sins, the Succinct and Select Aphorisms likewise lack such a chapter.
4 On the Image of God (Commonplace XI), § 137; On Free Choice (Commonplace XIV), § 114.
5 Anselm Schubert, Das Ende der Sünde: Anthropologie und Erbsünde zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 56–57, 110–17; Renatus Hupfeld, Die Ethik Johann Gerhards (Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn, 1908), 37; Balthasar Meisner, Ανθρωπολογιας Sacrae, in qua status naturae humanae, et eo spectantes articuli exponuntur, Decas Prima [–Tertia] (Montisbeligardi: Paulus Ledertz, 1619).
6 Bellarmine apparently was inconsistent. When disputing on justification, he argued for the real propagation of original sin in order to conclude from Rom. 5:18–19 that justification is not by imputation. See Gerhard, On Justification through Faith (Commonplace XIX), § 204.
7 On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), §§ 11, 59, 65, 89.
8 Schubert, Das Ende der Sünde, 107; Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950), 1:538–41.
9 Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed., trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication House, 1899; repr., Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961), 239–41.
10 On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), §§ 80, 62; On Providence (Commonplace IX), § 108; On Justification through Faith (Commonplace XIX), § 204; Confessionis Catholicae … Libri II. Specialis Pars Tertia, eademque Ultima, art. 23, ch. 4 (Jena: Steinmann, 1637), 718; Adnotationes Ad Priora Capita Epistolae D. Pauli Ad Romanos (Jena: Steinmann, 1644), 180.
11 On Justification through Faith (Commonplace XIX), § 204; Confessionis Catholicae, 717.
12 On the Image of God (Commonplace XI), §§ 116–28.
13 On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), § 101. For some history of the concept of delayed ensoulment, used in an attempt to justify early-term abortion, see Carol A. Tauer, “The Tradition of Probabilism and the Moral Status of the Early Embryo,” Theological Studies 45, no. 1 (1984): 3–33, especially pp. 7–8.