From Paul in Romans:
Romans 5:12-21 Listen12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore, as one trespass [1] led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness [2] leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (ESV)
And in 1 Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 15:21-26 Listen21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (ESV)
Let’s review the logical progression here:
- There was a man named Adam.
- Adam sinned.
- Adam was the progenitor of the entire human race.
- Therefore the entire human race was in Adam, and participated in his sin.
- Adam earned death by his sin (Rom. 6:23).
- Every true son of Adam inherits both sin and its wage, death, from Adam.
- Every true son of Adam demonstrates that he inherited sin from Adam by responding to the Law in rebellion (Rom. 5:20, Rom. 7:5).
This is the doctrine of original sin in a nutshell. Many in the modern church discredit this idea, but it is vital to the gospel, and here’s why:
- Christ was a second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45).
- Since sin was imputed to us by the first Adam, we needed a spiritual progenitor Who could impute His righteousness to us.
- Since judgment was ours because our sin and rebellion were real and not just imputed, we needed Someone Who could bear the wrath of God on our behalf. Alien righteousness is not enough if we still owe God the infinite debt of the judgment for our sins.
- Christ saved His people by substituting Himself for them and dying in their place, bearing their judgment (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
- Christ became our spiritual head and ancestor by making us His children instead of Adam’s, and thereby imputing righteousness to us instead of sin (2 Cor. 5:21).
If there is no real Adam, if there is not a single ancestor of the human race who:
- was perfect
- was given a commandment directly by God
- failed to keep that commandment
- fell from his perfect state to a place where death reigned over him, in a way that it had not before
- was cast out of the presence of the Lord
…then the second Adam had nothing to reverse for our sakes. The second Adam need not have been perfect, because the first was never perfect; He need not have perfectly kept the commandments of God, because the first never heard them, and never perfectly kept them; He cannot promise a perfect future state for man, because man never knew a perfect state in the past. There can be no restoration of former glory when there was no glory to begin with. An Adam who evolved from lower life forms should have been named “Ichabod.”
If somehow Christ can save us from our sins without a literal Adam, then Paul’s arguments from the true first Adam to the true second one are meaningless. Sin and death have always reigned in the world. The body cannot be restored to a state of former glory, beyond death and suffering and pain, because it was never made to be like that in the first place.
1 Corinthians 15:21 Listen21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. (ESV)
Give this up and you have ripped the foundation out from under the Gospel. Only if there was an Adam can there be a Christ.
13 Comments
Augh. When I first read this, I thought I saw something in there about Adam West…
I _must_ be tired…
That’s for my followup post: “If Joker, then Batman.”
Wow, Charlie, I just read your post. I think this would be worth posting on T-blog. It’s really good.
Hehe, nice.
It needs to anticipate a couple of objections before it would be ready for that. Like “maybe God took the summit of evolution, that is, Adam’s body, and gave it the gift of eternal life, health, etc.” It’s a form of the “God can do anything, you don’t know” objection. The first answer being, of course, that there isn’t a hint of that in Scripture, but the record acts like Adam is something different from the animals even in his very origin.
Hi Patrick,
You might find this discussion we had over at my blog a while back fairly interesting (though I admit I’m frustrated that this topic provokes so much more comments than others). I understand you most certainly disagree with me on this point, but I wonder if you mind answering a few probing questions:
Consider for sake of argument that science has given us the ability to directly observe events in history via time-travel. We therefore can be as certain of historical events as we are that the Earth revolves around the sun (not absolutely certain, but pretty darn sure).
Now answer the following questions:
(1) If we observe Christ’s body decaying and him not rising from the dead on the third day, but did observe a historical Adam, would you renounce your Christian faith?
(2) If we observe no single historical Adam, but do indeed observe a bodily resurrection of Chirst, would you renounce your Christian faith?
For my own part, I would answer “yes” to question one, and “no” to question two. Would you do the same? Because, unless I am mistaken, you are arguing that one must answer “yes” to both questions…
I’m not Patrick, but I’ll take a stab at this one.
“Christian faith” includes the Pauline Epistles’ doctrines of sin and salvation, particularly the argument in Romans I outlined above. For the moment I am going to assume that when you say that we do not observe something, that there is nothing there to observe. If there is a bodily resurrection of Christ but no single historical Adam, then the heart of the gospel is not what Paul thought it was; we end up with a disconnect between Pauline theology and history at that point. If such were provable, perhaps by time machine, then “Christian faith” would change in meaning; the people who say that Paul changed the gospel from that promulgated by the primitive church would be right.
Since my belief in Christ includes a belief in the inerrancy and inspiration of Paul’s Epistles, and particularly that Paul is arguing from the truth of a personal Adam and original sin to the truth of a personal Christ and imputed righteousness, then my answer would indeed be “yes” to both questions. Whatever Christian faith is in the world which you have posited, in which Adam did not exist as Paul believed he did, it is not the faith of Paul himself, and it is not what I recognize as my Christian faith.
If, however, you are saying that we can observe the resurrection of Christ but must remain agnostic about a personal Adam in a pristine pre-fall state (assuming that our only certainty could come from observation), then I would not renounce my Christian faith, because I would not renounce the concept of a historical Adam who existed at some point in a pre-fall, Edenic state, on the basis of a lack of scientific evidence.
I think there is evidence for both a historical Adam (science has up to this point asserted that all existing humans derive from a single mother, at any rate) and a historical resurrection (and I won’t rehearse what the evidentialists specialize in, they’ve done their homework, I haven’t). The real question is whether there is evidence for a pre-fall Edenic state, but to be honest I think the nature of the curse makes this a difficult thing to demonstrate. Still, I myself am convinced of the literal nature of Genesis 1-11 by hermeneutics, not scientific evidence.
If you were actually querying Patrick, sorry about the intrusion, and I would be interested in hearing what he has to say.
I’ll defer to Charlie here; he’s said it far better than I ever could.
Especially: “Still, I myself am convinced of the literal nature of Genesis 1-11 by hermeneutics, not scientific evidence.”
Charles,
Sorry about that. I thought for some strange reason that Patrick had written this essay. Don’t know why I was confused.
He’s been a bit more vocal than I have lately. It’s a common mistake. I’m riding his coattails to be honest.
Hm, my own evaluation is that it’s the reverse.
If it’s not clear now, though, I think time will prove this out.
Honestly, folks who want something deeper, more intelligent, etc. would do immensely better to turn to Charlie’s writings than listen to anything I might have to say (as is certainly in evidence here, for instance).
For the most part, I just have a big mouth. But my words are pretty empty.
Here’s what Patrick does:
[bibleblock]Psalm 40:8-10[/bibleblock]
Man, Charlie, will you please stop turning the tables on me?!
But at best I’m like Balaam’s donkey: only when I utter God’s message to others do I have anything worthwhile to say. Otherwise I just hee-haw and make a donkey out of myself.
Speaking of which, actually, Charlie brought out the most essential point of all: it’s all about the message. It’s all about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s all about Him and Him alone.