Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Man, Part 25.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Welcome to Defenders.

I'm glad that you could join us today.

We've been talking about the doctrine of original sin, and last time I argued on the basis

of our study of Romans chapter 5 that Paul teaches neither the imputation of Adam's sin

to all men, nor that all men inherit a corrupted human nature from Adam.

And therefore, I think that Augustine's doctrine of original sin is not incumbent upon the biblically

faithful Christian. But suppose we do want to go Augustine's route in thinking that all men somehow sin in Adam.

How might we understand such a doctrine in the face of the Enlightenment critique,

which, as you'll remember, held that no person can be justly punished for another man's sin.

Well, traditionally, Reformation theologians have understood Adam to be the federal head of the human race.

He represents us before God, just as here in the United States,

our federal representative represents us in the United States Congress. Our representative

votes for us. We don't live in a pure democracy in which all of us go and vote. Rather,

we have a representative system whereby our representative votes in our place. Or to borrow a

different analogy from the financial world, think of a stockholders meeting.

Jan and I sometimes receive in the mail a proxy form which we are asked to sign in order to

authorize someone else to serve as our proxy at the shareholders' meeting. Since we ourselves do not attend

the shareholders' meeting, our proxy does, and he votes in our place. It is our vote, however,

that he is casting, not his his own because he is our proxy.

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