R. L. Dabney on our Federal Headship in Adam

“The explanation presented by the doctrine of imputation is demanded by all except Pelagians and Socinians. Man’s is a spiritually dead and condemned race. See Eph. 2:1-5, et passim. He is obviously under a curse for something, from the beginning of life. Witness the native depravity of infants, and their inheritance of woe and death. Now, either man was tried and fell in Adam, or he has be condemned without trial. He is either under the curse (as it rests on him at the beginning of his existence) for Adam’s guilt, or for no guilt at all. Judge which is most honorable to God, a doctrine which, although profoundly mysterious, represents Him as giving man an equitable and most favorable probation in his federal head; or that which makes God condemn him untried, and even before he exists.”

Robert Lewis Dabney, Theology.

Some Prophetic Insights from Robert Lewis Dabney

Of the Theocentric nature of human knowledge:

“Every line of true knowledge must find its completeness as it converges on God, just as every beam of day-light leads the eye to the sun. If [Christian] religion in excluded from our study, every process of thought will be arrested before it reaches its proper goal. The structure of thought must remain a truncated cone, with its proper apex lacking.”

Of the philosophical/religious neutrality pretentiously posed by secular educationalists:

“The instructor has to teach history, cosmogony, psychology, ethics, the laws of nations. How can he do it without saying anything favorable or unfavorable about the beliefs of evangelical Christians, Catholics, Socinians, Deists, pantheists, materialists or fetish worshippers, who all claim equal rights under American institutions? His teaching will indeed be ‘the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted.”

On Secular Education, pp. 16—17