The Two Adams

This fifth way is really just a symptom of the problem outlined above, but it represents a common enough objection that it deserves its own little treatment. Young-earthers often object that if evolution is true then Paul’s statement about the first and second Adams is undermined. If Adam did not really exist, then Paul has no basis for his argument that all of unredeemed humanity is subsumed under the typology of Adam’s sin, while all of redeemed humanity is subsumed into Christ’s (the Second Adam’s) righteousness. If Christ is historical then Adam must have been historical in order for Paul’s argument to work.

There are two problems with this picture. First, evolution does not rule out the possibility of a first man and first woman into whom God breathed his spirit and whom God made over into his own likeness. Any claims to the contrary are unfounded. Adam and Eve could have been the first and only humans to have emerged by way of mutation.

Second, and apart from the above comment, the young-earthers objection here does little service to either the Genesis or the Pauline texts. First, Adam and Eve seem to be typological titles. While there may have been an actual Adam and Eve, the fact that Adam means “earth-man” seems to indicate that he is representative. But that is really a non-issue. Paul’s account is clearly typological, and the idea that the truthfulness of his account depends on the historicity of Adam, the first man, is just a little ridiculous (in my view). If Moses was using the figure of “Adam” to represent the early, idyllic existence of humankind (a very possible view), then Paul would not be at fault for doing the very same thing. Even if Adam actually existed, Paul is still using him typologically. He is a representative figure in Paul’s argument, whether or not he was an actual historical figure at the dawn of time. If Adam was a Jewish way of speaking about humanity’s original goodness and its fall into self-destructiveness, Paul is not doing anything dubious by being Jewish. Nor would it undermine the historicity of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus if Adam were not an actual historical figure. Paul was speaking typologically. While he was a witness to the events surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, his typology of Adam is derivative. None of this undermines the truth of his claim. It is a very Jewish, very poetic way of summing up salvation history whether or not it is at all points historical. Hagar and Sarah were not literally mountains, but Paul used them in Galatians as typological figures, representative of two groups of people. Their significance in Paul’s argument is not their historicity but the role in the narrative which Paul adopts for his purposes after the revelation of Jesus Christ. “Adam,” real or not, played a role in the formative narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures and served his purposes (apart from the actual historical contingencies of his life, mostly lost to us if indeed he existed). Whether Adam was one man or representative of a group of men at the dawn of humanity is irrelevant to the point that he represents—that humanity was created good by God but has chosen instead to be wicked.

So far so good, on the fifth way.

Intro, Way 1, Way 2, Way 3, Way 4, Way 5, Way 6, Sabbath

Labels: Creation, Evolution, Science