Berkhof Questions

Spiritual death.
The sufferings of life.
Physical death.
Eternal death.

Sin is also the punishment of sin. This means that the sinful state and condition in which man is born by nature is part of the penalty of sin.

A state.
An inherent quality of pollution in man.

The unrenewed sinner cannot do any act, however insignificant, that fundamentally meets with God’s approval and answers to the demands of the holy law.
He cannot change his fundamental preference for sin and self to love for God, nor even make an approach to such a change.

The absence of original righteousness.
The presence of positive evil.

It is derived from the original root of the human race.
Present in the life of every human being from birth.
The inward root of all the actual sins that defile the life of man.

Human nature constitutes not only generically but numerically as well a single unit, meaning that all men actually sinned in Adam before the individualization of human nature began.

1 Kings 8:46; Psalm 143:2; Proverbs 20:9; Ecclesiastes 7:20.
Romans 3:1–12, 19, 20, 23; Galatians 3:22; James 3:2; 1 John 1:8, 10.

Children are born in a state of neutrality, beginning exactly where Adam began.

Sin is a specific kind of evil
Sin has an absolute character
Sin always has relation to God and His will
Sin includes both will and pollution
Sin has its seat in the heart
Sin does not consist exclusively in overt acts but also in sinful habits and in a sinful condition of the soul

•The total depravity of human nature
• The loss of communion with God through the Holy Spirit
• A consciousness of pollution revealing itself in a sense of shame
• Not only spiritual death but physical death as well
• A necessary change of residence

Romans 5:12, 17-19; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14.

Barth and Brunner regard the narrative of man's original state and of the fall as a myth.

Because Adam sinned as the father of the race and the representative head of all his descendants.

The mystery of election. Sin originated in the fall, which belongs to superhistory.
Barth said that it doesn't make any difference if it is literal history or not.

The problem of the origin of evil in the world.

Its obligations were met by Christ, the Mediator. It is abrogated as an appointed means to obtain eternal life. Man will never gain eternal life by obedience to the law. At best, we don't measure up to what the law demands.

His obligation to keep the law – the authority of the law.

The tree of life.

The separation of the soul from God, which manifests itself as spiritual misery, finally terminates in eternal death, and finally leads to the separation of soul and body and the dissolution of the body.

Physical, spiritual, and eternal death.

That of implicit and perfect obedience.

The rendering like Adam is the best. Favored by the parallel passage in Job 31:33 and was adopted by the American Revised Version.

Romans 5:12-21.

Two parties, a condition, a promise of reward for obedience, and a penalty for transgression.

The moral perfection of the image, which could be and was lost by sin.

Eph. 4:24, Col. 3:10.

The idea expressed by the two words is that of the very image of God.

The soul is united with and adapted to a body but can if needs be also exist without the body.

True knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

(1) That the soul is divisible
(2) That all men are numerically of the same substance
(3) That Christ assumed the same numerical nature which fell in Adam

To express the idea that the image was most like a perfect image. That which was archetypal in God became ectypal in man.

They are used synonymously and interchangeably and do not refer to different things.

Augustine.

This theory makes God the direct author of moral evil if the soul is evil; and if the soul was created pure and joined to a sinful body, it makes Him indirectly responsible for sin.

More consistent with the prevailing representations of Scripture:
(1) The original account of creation points to a marked distinction between the creation of the body and of the soul – Ecclesiastes 12:7.
(2) More consistent with the nature of the human soul.
(3) It avoids the pitfalls of traducianism as to Christology.

Each individual soul is to be regarded as an immediate creation of God, owing its origin to a direct act of God. It is created pure and united to the sinful body.

It leads to insuperable difficulties in Christology. If in Adam human nature as a whole sinned, then the conclusion cannot be escaped that the human nature of Christ was also sinful and guilty for falling in Adam.

(1) Scriptural support:
 (a) Scripture says that God once breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life.
 (b) The creation of Eve’s soul was included in that of Adam since she is said to be of man.
 (c) God ceased from the work of creation after creating man.
 (d) The descendants are said to be in the loins of their fathers – Hebrews 7:9-10.
(2) Supported by the analogy of vegetable and animal life, cp. Psalm 104:30.
(3) Seeks support in the inheritance of mental peculiarities in family traits.
(4) It seems to offer the best basis for the explanation of the inheritance of moral and spiritual depravity. It is common to combine it with the realist theory.

Tertullian, Rufinus, Apollinaris, and Gregory of Nyssa were traducianists. From the days of Luther, it has been the Lutheran position. In the Reformed camp: H.B. Smith, W.G.T. Shedd, and A.H. Strong.

The notion that the souls of man are propagated along with the bodies by natural generation and are therefore transmitted to the children by their parents.

The theory that the souls of man existed in a former state and that this accounts for the condition in which souls are now found.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12

Dichotomy.

Dichotomy (body and soul) and Trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit).

The theory has no adequate basis on well-established facts.

That it is contrary to the explicit teaching of God’s Word.

By the combination of body and soul, man became a living soul, which means in this connection simply a living being.

1. Man’s creation was preceded by a solemn divine counsel
2. The creation of man was in the strictest sense of the word an immediate act of God
3. Man was created after a divine type
4. The different elements of human nature are clearly distinguished in Gen. 2:7.
5. Man is at once placed in an exalted position when created

Only with what the Bible says respecting man and the relation in which he stands and should stand to God.