Doctrine of Man (Part 13): New Testament Authors’ References to Adam

New Testament Authors’ References to Adam

To review what we said last week, there are several crucial distinctions that we need to keep in mind as we explore New Testament references to the person of Adam. You will remember we distinguished between the literary Adam of the Genesis stories and the historical Adam. We distinguished between truth-in-a-story and just plain truth. And we distinguished between using a text illustratively and using that text assertorically to teach a certain truth.

We need to keep these distinctions in mind and therefore to be cautious about using New Testament citations of Old Testament passages lest we fall into overly easy proofs of Old Testament historicity. We need to do this because otherwise we are going to find ourselves committed to the existence of Jannes and Jambres, for example, or to the authenticity of 1 Enoch. So we cannot, for example, prove Jonah’s historicity simply by citing the words of Jesus: “Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the belly of the earth three days and three nights.” If Jesus is using this text illustratively, then that doesn’t commit him or us to the historicity of Jonah. Obviously, that doesn’t mean Jonah isn’t historical, but what we are cautioning against are overly easy proofs of historicity simply on the basis of New Testament citations of Old Testament texts.

So returning to our list of texts that we read previously concerning Adam in the New Testament, we find that some of them plausibly involve an illustrative use of the stories about Adam in Genesis. Most importantly, I think that Jesus’ own statements about Adam are plausibly illustrative. In Matthew 19:4-6, we have the following:

[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Notice that in this passage Jesus begins by drawing attention to the literary figure of Adam – “Have you not read. . .?” he begins. He then quotes Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them” and then he weds that statement with Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh.” This then forms the basis for his teaching on divorce. Jesus is exegeting the story of Adam and Eve to discern its implications for marriage and divorce. He is not asserting its historicity.

A clear example of illustrative usage is 2 Corinthians 11:3. Paul says, “I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Here the use of the conjunction “as” (as the serpent did this, so also in your case) shows that Paul is drawing a comparison. He uses the story of the Fall as an illustrative analogy to the dangerous situation of the Christians in Corinth. The historicity of the story is neither germane nor asserted.

Other examples are less clear. Take for example 1 Timothy 2:13-14. Paul says, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” This looks like an assertion of a historical fact. But the verse could be plausibly interpreted illustratively. Paul is describing what the story says; he is basing his teaching about women’s teaching authority (or lack thereof) in the church on his exegesis of the story of Eve’s creation and transgression in Genesis. Similarly, his statement in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9, “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” sounds and may be assertoric. But it could plausibly be taken as purely literary instead. Paul is here summarizing what the story says, how Eve was created as Adam’s helper, and basing his teaching on his exegesis of that story. So a number of these texts, I think, can be interpreted illustratively.

By contrast the genealogy of Jesus found in Luke 3 which terminates in Adam, the Son of God, is clearly intended to be assertoric, just as the genealogies in the primeval history in the book of Genesis evince a historical interest in people who actually lived. In fact, Luke really adds nothing to our knowledge of Adam that we have not already acquired from our study of Genesis. Similarly, Paul’s statement before the Areopagus in Acts 17:26, “[God] made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation” seems to be assertoric in nature. It is describing the historical advance of peoples throughout the world from their common historical origin in Adam. Doubtless the reference to the “one” in this verse is to Adam, not to Noah, as Paul’s contrast between Adam and Christ in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 illustrates. The duality is Christ and Adam, not Christ and Noah. Paul’s teaching thus commits anyone who follows the apostolic teaching to a historical Adam. Moreover, notice that Adam is here conceived to be, as in Genesis, the progenitor of the entire human race on all the face of the Earth, wherever and whenever people may have lived, not merely a couple that has been selected out of a wider mass of humanity to fulfill God’s calling.

The Old Testament scholar John Collins has said that it is difficult to make a case on the basis of the texts we’ve dealt with this morning for the assumption of Adam and Eve’s historicity. These texts don’t rely upon an actual historical person for the validity of Paul’s argument. But Collins says the case is different when it comes to 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 (not to mention Acts 17:26). In these crucial passages in 1 Corinthians and Romans Paul lays out his Adam Christology. We’ll not try to go into the theology of these passages in great depth, but are going to restrict our attention to what these passages imply with respect to the historical Adam.

In dealing with Paul’s two passages about Adam in 1 Corinthians 15 the question we face is whether his use of Adam involves a merely literary figure – whether that suffices to capture Paul’s meaning with respect to Adam. Let’s review what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45-49. Paul writes,

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. . . . Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

In verses 45-46, Paul’s expression “Thus it is written” followed by his paraphrase of Genesis 2:7 directs our attention immediately to the Genesis narrative of Adam’s creation. There is little in the ensuing paragraph that takes us beyond the literary character in Genesis 2. Adam is said to be the first man, physical (or, as it is sometimes translated, “natural” – the word in the Greek is psychikos which means “natural” or “physical”), from the earth, and to be made of dust. All of that is true of the figure that we meet in the Genesis account. He was, according to the story, the first human being that God had made, formed by God out of the dust of the earth, and therefore having a natural body. In saying that we all bear the image of the one made of dust, Paul may not be saying more than that we are all like the man described in the story. Each of us has a natural body (sōma psychikon – sōma is the Greek word for “body” and psychikon is the adjective describing that body – a natural body), made of dust, and therefore mortal. 

There may, however, be a hint of the historical Adam in Paul’s expression “it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.” Paul might mean simply that in the story the natural or physical body is created first. But it is not the case in the story that after the physical, “then the spiritual” is created. True, God breathes into the earthly man the divine breath, so that the man becomes a living being; but that still belongs to the natural realm, not to the spiritual realm. We have to wait until Christ’s resurrection for the spiritual to appear. So Paul might be attributing a genuine chronological or historical priority of Adam to Christ, in which case we have moved outside of the story to postulate a historical Adam.

Ultimately, whether Paul is using Adam more than just illustratively in 1 Corinthians 15:45-46 is apt to depend upon what he meant by his earlier statement in verses 21-22, “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” An illustrative reference to the literary Adam would suffice, I think, for Paul’s statement “As by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead,” for the antecedent of that sentence (“As by a man came death”) does not clearly move outside of the Genesis narrative, even though the consequent of that sentence (“so by a man has come the resurrection of the dead”) is external to the narrative.

On the other hand, Paul’s statement “in Adam all die” may look like a truth asserted external to the narrative because it is not part of the literary Adam of Genesis that all die in Adam. But it is important to note that while Romans 5 contrasts the spiritual death and condemnation in Adam versus justification and righteousness in Christ, here in 1 Corinthians 15 the contrast is not forensic (or judicial), rather it is physical: in Adam all persons die physically but in Christ we shall someday be made alive and enjoy resurrection life. Notice that the concern here in 1 Corinthians 15, in contrast with Romans 5, is with physical immortality, not with righteousness and salvation. The contrast is between Adam’s physical mortality and the immortality that we will have in Christ through his physical resurrection from the dead.

In contrast to Romans 5, Paul’s employment of the Adam/Christ typology in 1 Corinthians 15 is thus focused on physical death and resurrection. Although we might think that physical death is the result of Adam’s sin, notice that Paul does not affirm this. Gordon Fee, who is a prominent evangelical commentator on 1 Corinthians, has commented as follows on 1 Corinthians 15:45,

The first Adam, who became a living psychē [being] was thereby given a psychikos [natural] body at creation, a body subject to decay and death. . . . The last Adam, on the other hand, whose ‘spiritual (glorified) body’ was given at his resurrection, . . .  is himself the source of the pneumatikos [spiritual] life as well as the pneumatikos [spiritual] body.[1]

On this view physical death is not the result of the fall; rather Adam was created with a mortal natural body. Think about it. If Adam and Eve had been naturally immortal, then why have a Tree of Life in the Garden at all? It would serve no physical purpose in paradise if they were naturally immortal. Notice that the Tree of Life serves to rejuvenate its eater physically, not spiritually, hence the concern about fallen man’s eating from the Tree and living forever. Notice that God’s concern was not that Adam and Eve would eat from the Tree of Life and be spiritually regenerated or born anew, but rather in their condition of alienation and condemnation from God they would be physically rejuvenated and immortal. So why have a Tree of Life in the Garden at all if they were naturally immortal? Moreover, think about this, Jesus Christ, though sinless, also had a body which was psychikos (natural) and therefore mortal, so that he could die. It is only with his resurrection that his sōma psychikon (his natural body) was transformed into a sōma pneumatikon (a spiritual body). That happens at the resurrection. It cannot therefore be said that physical death is a consequence of personal sin, or Christ would not be able to die. The only sense in which physical death might be seen as a consequence of sin is, I think, indirect: it is a consequence of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden, cutting them off from any hope of immortality, symbolized by the Tree of Life.

So Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 associates human mortality with the creation of Adam, not with his Fall. Adam is created with a sōma psychikon; he does not get one by sinning. Paul implies that physical mortality is the natural human condition. So in saying that in Adam all die, Paul may be saying that it is in virtue of sharing a common human nature with Adam that we share in his natural mortality. Perhaps Paul draws that inference based upon the literary Adam, but it may just go beyond the boundaries of the literary Adam to touch the historical Adam.