May I say that I enjoyed your chapter in RG 1-2, aEC? I can identify with the comment about whether “my future crown will turn out to be a millstone” --it would seem so few really understand what’s at stake here, and I appreciate your focus on authorial intent. May the LORD increase your tribe (manageably) and thanks for your willingness to offer friendship as a fellow disciple!
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The point of interpreting the context of statements with paradoxical or inigmatic grammar is to identify a solution, a context, using the least semantic violence and the most economical resolution.
While other solutions can be contrived… there is not more than one or two that can plausibly fit all the moving parts.
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Agreed. Good to hear from you.
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Welcome, Keith!
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Guy, nice job on the OP. I think your explanation fits the text fairly well, but I see problems with it theologically. I haven’t read all of the comments and so someone else may have pointed this out.
Romans 5:12-14 says
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all men, because all sinned. 13 In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression. He is a prototype of the Coming One.
I don’t see how your view can fit the theological context that sin entered the human race through Adam and that there was no human death before Adam. If you can address those issues, I would be willing to take another look at your view.
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Well its nice to be on the same side as @Guy_Coe rather than dueling over our minor differences. @Ronald_Cram Not even Martin Luther held to the view that there was no physical death before the fall of Adam.
Consider also the below excerpt from Early Genesis, the Revealed Cosmology
In Romans 5:12 he is also using the “world” as a term to describe the human inhabitants of the planet (as in John 3:16), not the whole planet and biosphere. This can be seen where it gives the result of Adam’s fall “sin passed upon all men, and by sin, death”. It says nothing about death passing onto all animals, or the laws of nature being changed because death was on the rocks and rivers. That is more theology that is not in the Bible! What the passage says is that sin passed upon men, clearly indicating that the use of the word “world” is that which means the human inhabitants of the earth.
I suggest that the same thing is true of the word “death” as used in Romans 5:12. Taking the Bible “literally” should not be an excuse for a believer to interpret a passage the same way a secular atheist would. The “death” that Adam was subjected to was a spiritual death. It later manifested in a physical death but God told him that he would die in the day that he ate the forbidden fruit. His body lived on for centuries, but the death God was speaking of was separation from Him. That is the same meaning of death Paul speaks of here.
The death which passed to all men was a spiritual death. This was not about whether their physical bodies would be subject to decay, but about where their souls would spend eternity. In Adam, mankind moved from innocence to accountability, and in ourselves we failed at giving a good account.
Christ has died for our sins and removed the curse, but we still “die” a natural death which we understand as sleep until the resurrection. Is our goal to get back to the Garden, or is it to get to Heaven? And if our goal is Heaven, is it not true that this world is only but a stepping stone, a test to bring glory to God? Don’t the sages tell us that this world is not our home? It wasn’t our home before the fall either. It’s not that Christ’s atonement somehow failed to fully redeem us from the curse of the fall. He has fully redeemed us. This world was never meant to be eternal. Nor were our bodies within it meant to be eternal.
Early Genesis says as much in chapter three verse six when Adam and Eve are about to eat the forbidden fruit. It says “and she gave unto her husband with her, and he ate.” The word translated “husband” there is enosh. Like a’dam, it is a word which means “human” or “humanity” but, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, in a less dignified sense than a’dam because it emphasizes man’s mortality. That this word was used to describe Adam just before he ate of the forbidden fruit indicates that he was a mortal. “Mortal” is a fair translation of the word enosh. Adam was a mortal man about to cut his own lifeline.
That Adam had to eat of the Tree of Life to become immortal is another indication that He was not immortal prior to his fall. One might say “but maybe he did not need to eat of the tree of life before he fell because he already had eternal life on earth until his fall.”
If that was true, then the existence of the Tree of Life becomes superfluous. If that view of physical death is true, then the Tree of Life is not needed to produce eternal existence unless Adam chooses to be his own god, at which point God makes it unavailable anyway. The Tree of Life is a type of the Kingdom of Heaven and it makes no sense at all for this tree to be an unnecessary element. This should be a clue to us that Adam did not have eternal physical existence without access to the Tree of Life, even prior to his fall.
Now as far as the spread of the sin nature- acting out of faith - unto those outside the garden, Genealogical Adam presents one solution. But I think the text suggests another and it would be wonderful if theologians could discuss the two, because it would mean they would be talking in the context of a two-population model.
Is that really such an intractable problem? You are assuming Adam was created immortal. However this doesn’t seem to be the case for two reasons-
- Genesis mentions a tree of life which could have made him immortal.
- The Bible clearly teaches that our current body is mortal… just as Adams body was.
1 Cor15: 39 Not all flesh is the same. Humans have one kind of flesh, animals in general have another, birds have another, and fish have still another.
40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of those in heaven is of one kind, and that of those on earth is of another.
41 One kind of splendor belongs to the sun, another to the moon, and still another to the stars. In fact, one star differs from another star in splendor.
42 This is how it will be at the resurrection of the dead. What is planted is decaying, what is raised cannot decay.
43 The body is planted in a state of dishonor but is raised in a state of splendor. It is planted in weakness but is raised in power.
44 It is planted a physical body but is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
45 This, indeed, is what is written: “The first man, Adam, became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 The spiritual does not come first, but the physical does, and then comes the spiritual.
47 The first man came from the dust of the earth; the second man came from heaven.
48 Those who are made of the dust are like the man from the dust; those who are heavenly are like the man who is from heaven.
49 Just as we have borne the likeness of the man who was made from dust, we will also bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
50 Brothers, this is what I mean: Mortal bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and what decays cannot inherit what does not decay.
So Adam’s death is more a result of God not glorifying him and giving him eternal life.
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Adam’s mortality depended, not just upon eating the fruit of the tree of Life, but as far as I can tell, continuous access to it.
I guess I can answer, at least in part, this way –if human (and animal… and insect… and cellular…) death didn’t exist until the fall, how sustainable would the population growth be? How quickly before the earth would be overrun, and ecological collapse ensue? The idea is unsustainable at the get go. But that’s just a negation. Positively, making human longevity a matter of being tied to a sustainable ecology, like continued access to the tree of life, at least then begins to make sense.
The kind of death in view in the NT is death towards God. For humanity, life is never just a matter of being alive physically, but alive to one’s Creator / Maker. The Romans 5 passage is careful to note, in verse 13, that sin was even in the world before the first law (which was not the decalogue, but actually the “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”), but that it was not accorded as such (and thus we were not alienated from God) until the fall.
Why would Paul make this distinction, qualifying his first statement, unless some form of human life existed PRIOR to Adam and Eve before the fall?
Wouldn’t humanity, in a morally naive state, but essentially alive towards God, be a “very good” thing, compared to what we have now?
We’d all be more like “good kids” --not perfect, but not yet capable of great moral evil, either.
What there was before Adam was no deliberate human defiance of the will of God, and thus no death towards Him.
Eternal life with Him would not yet be a matter of becoming reconciled first, at least not in the form of the need for an atoning death, as far as I can tell.
The death (or simply the taming) of individual ego, subsumed under the goodness of God towards the whole of humanity, would maybe suffice, at least provisionally.
Your thoughts?
Makes sense that God laid the plans to redeem us from death, long before humanity rebelled, given the free choice He would offer for us to learn righteousness, no matter what the choice. God is all about bringing us to maturity!
Cheers!
Perhaps I should mention that I also advocate that there was a heritable change in human neuromorphology and functioning, specifically with regards to the rate of neural cell growth rate and dendritic branching, especially in the neocortex, which rendered all of humanity descendant from Adam and Eve comparatively morally “advanced” in a manner concomitant with the “gaining of the knowledge of good and evil.”
That is, the fall was not only spiritually, but of necessity, also physically, damaging. God’s preferred plan to school us in righteousnes would have led away from this present morass.
That capacity, once illegitimately gained, would continue to vaunt itself as supreme and God as thereby diminished, in our bid to become masters of our own choosing. Not a good way to start civilization, with a new bent towards subjugation rather than mutual valuing.
@Ronald_Cram , @AllenWitmerMiller , @AJRoberts, @deuteroKJ , @ whoever is interested among the newer voices, your comments? Cheers!
I think Romans 5 is a hurdle for the pre-Adamite imager view (I’m distinguishing biological human from biblical human—the latter being when imageness became a reality). A co-Adamite view escapes the problem b/c Adam and Eve would be part of the initial human population to whom imageness could’ve been conferred in mass, with A&E designated their reps (see Jack Collins).
Separating spiritual death from physical death is n’t that simple or obvious (and can sound a bit gnostic). The Bible doesn’t separate body/soul like that—the “soul” is not an immaterial part (though I affirm something of a material:immatetial abthropoligy). The argument based on “in the day of your eating” doesn’t work b/c the construction “in the day of” simply means “when” (the word “day” loses its independent value within the construction; this has been argued by several, including Doug Moo working on NIV and affirmed by Walton). And the infinitive absolute within “you shall surely die” can indicate the process begins but not necessarily completed in a moment.
Current attempts to wrestle with this are currently underway by those who hold to pre-Afamites. Richard Middleton shared with me a yet-to-be published essay, basically arguing that “death” takes on an added nuance when culpability comes into play. It’s sort of an extension on the “spiritual death” view but takes it to a new level and seeks to separate Adamites and non-Adamites in the discussion. @jongarvey has several articles along this line as well (I.e., the biblical narrative is focused on Adam’s line)
I’m patient and will let the discussion continue. I will say that several of the models here are too concordist for my liking. We are all concirdist at some level (see my BioLogos article on concordism), but I find it difficult to think the biblical authors are providing details about a pre-history they likely new nothing or very little about.
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14 posts were split to a new topic: Wrongdoing Before Adam and Romans 5
3 posts were split to a new topic: Concordism and Genesis 1-2
YEs definitely.
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If Paul is not contemplating a “pre-Adam,” outside the garden humanity in Romans 5, why does he qualify his statement with regards to Adam, as in verse 13? What is Paul talking about in verse 13, and better yet, why?
Kenneth Kitchens is a worthy read on this point, assuring us that the ancients already knew they were part of a humanity that stretched way back beyond them. It was as assumptive for them then as it is for us today. Only YEC has ever managed to get us to question this, based upon an indefensible, to my mind, reading of the text.
Of course the message would be couched in relatable terms of human thought. Eyewitness testimony going back to before the creation of humans would, of necessity, be reported phenomenologically by the only Witness Who was there for the whole thing. The account of which may have been passed down as early as in the garden, if not before, to a humanity prepared to hear God’s words, spoken by the Christophany of the LORD Himself.
Please don’t dismiss this with a label. I’m saying this is what the text says, plainly, from an ancient Hebrew context…
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Of course, as a discerning Hebrew professor, I value your feedback.
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Kaiser’s latest comes maddeningly close, but the sequential reading is being resisted because of bad history, and in overreaction to the notion that somehow, thereby, one is promoting a “two creations” view, a hurdle I could not get you over, despite having explicitly said the second pericope was more about “forming” and “preparing” a certain man from among “imago Dei” humanity for an important role.