Quite so - that’s why it is standard in Reformed theology and, in the history of theistic evolution, was held by B B Warfield.
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I’d call it a typological primacy --the first instance of a repeated pattern, though worsening over time. As you know, I’ve also proposed a way to begin to explore the question of something heritable from Adam and Eve.
References and quotes please?
By all means:
Calvin is in many ways the rorefunner of Reformed federal theology. Calvin makes extensive use of the covenant idea in his Institutes (1559) and other writings in the following areas: the unity of the OT and the NT, the mutuality and conditionality of the covenant, the benefits of salvation, the Christian life (law, prayer, repentance, assurance), predestination (predestination explains why the covenant works as it does), the reformation of the Church …, the sacraments. One can also observe an elementary form of the covenant of works in his writings.
[Notes on other contributors]… These ideas coupled with the covenant of grace resulted in the federal theology of men such as Johannes Cocceius (1603-69). The covenant of works and grace received credal status in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms (1643-49).
( Covenant in Ferguson & Wright (eds) New Dictionary of Theology, Leicester IVP 1988 p175.)
The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works (Gal 3:12), wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity (Rom 10:5; 5:12-20), upon condition of perfect and personal obedience (Gen 2:17; Gal 3:10)
(Westminster Confession chap VII, Sect. 2.)
The development of the federal theology brought the idea of Adam as the representative of the human race to the foreground, and led to a clearer distinction between the transmission of the guilt and of the pollution of Adam’s sin. Without denying that our native corruption also constitutes guilt in the sight of God, federal theology stressed the fact that there is an “immediate” imputation of Adam’s guilt to those whom he represented as the head of the covenant.
(Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Edinburgh, Banner of Truth, 1976, pp238-9)
We are burdened with the guilt of Adam’s first sin and have received its penalty. Surely that is enough. We do not need to defend the theory of acquired qualities in order to account for our partaking in the penalty of Adam’s sin; the principle of representation is enough. We do not need to insist that a son tends to inherit the moral character of his parents, which (on the broad question) certainly is not borne out by common experience. The children of the pious are not uniformly pious nor are those of the vicious uniformly vicious… It seems better, then, to follow what appears to us to be the simple scriptural presentation, and to say that we partake in Adam’s sin because he was our representative, and that he was constituted our representative because he was our father and as such was naturally indicated for that office.
(B B Warfield, Review of Orr, God’s Image in Man (1905), in Noll & Livingstone, B B Warfield - Evolution, Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000) p235.
The fact of racial sin is basal to the whole Pauline system (Rom 5:12-14; 1 Cor 15:21-22), and beneath the fact of racial sin lies the fact of racial unity. It is only because all men were in Adam as their first head that all men share in Adam’s sin and with his sin in his punishment. And it is only beause the sin of man is thus one in origin, and therefore of the same nature and quality, that the redemption which is suitable and may be made available for one is equally suitable and may be made available for all… The unity of the human race is therefore made in Scripture not merely on the basis of a demand that we recognize the dignity of humanity in all its representatives, of however lowly estate or family, since all bear alike the image of God in which man was created, and the image of God is deeper than sin and cannot be eradicated by sin (Gen 5:1; 9:6. 1 Cor 11:7; Heb 2:5-8); but the basis also of the entire scheme of restoration devised by the divine love for the salvation of a lost race…
…The inity of te old man in Adam is the postulate of the unity of the new man in Christ.
(Warfield, On the Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race (1911), Ibid. p286-7.
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What about reference to natural descent?
Sorry Josh - not quite understanding you here. Do you mean covenant theologians affirming that all are descended from Adam, which would never have been in doubt for anyone orthodox before Darwin (Warfield makes some reference to Pre-adamitism and La Peyrere)? Or the transmission of the sin nature by natural descent, which was not denied, but was not integral, to federal theology?
Both would be helpful.
Let’s be clear that the inheritance of the sinful nature is inherent to the whole western tradition post-Augustine, and those in the East following Augustine. Also the inheritance of death is common to both East and West.
I’m not aware that it is denied by any of the Reformed federalists, except that for those persuaded by the scientific impossibility of Adam as universal ancestor, the stress all goes on to federal headship. This seems to be the gist of the Warfield quote above. But Calvin, who expounded the idea of inherited guilt that led the way to federal headship, begins his treatment on original sin in the Institutes thus:
Book II. chap. i . . . Therefore original sin is seen to be an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature diffused into all parts of the soul . . . wherefore those who have defined original sin as the lack of the original righteousness with which we should have been endowed, no doubt include, by implication, the whole fact of the matter, but they have not fully expressed the positive energy of this sin. For our nature is not merely bereft of good, but is so productive of every kind of evil that it cannot be inactive. Those who have called it concupiscence [a strong, especially sexual desire, lust] have used a word by no means wide of the mark, if it were added (and this is what many do not concede) that whatever is in man from intellect to will, from the soul to the flesh, is all defiled and crammed with concupiscence; or, to sum it up briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing but concupiscence. . .
These remarks were, at least in part, a qualifier to Augustine, who placed so much emphasis on sexual concupiscence in the transmission of sin:
Recent studies of Calvin’s use of Augustine established that Augustine was Calvin’s main source of inspiration and reference within the Christian tradition (cf. Pitkin, 1999:347). Calvin’s discussions of sin indeed reflect and appeal directly to key positions advanced by Augustine, particularly in his anti-Pelagian writings (Pitkin, 1999: 348). He followed Augustine in viewing sin as more than a mere negativity, but as a depravity that contaminates all dimensions of human existence. Yet it would be a mistake to equate Augustine’s view with that of Calvin. Though Calvin accepted Augustine’s doc-trine of original sin and the bondage of the human will, he also attempted to modify it in such a way that it would be logically more comprehensible. https://indieskriflig.org.za/index.php/skriflig/article/download/181/78
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I thought i would remind some readers that before Genealogical Adam emerged as a viable set of scenarios… the only hope to bridge Creationists and Evolutionists was to argue AGAINST the literal interpretation of Original Sin.
Now… with the new scenarios that include de novo Adam and Eve… Evolutionists Christians (even those like me who continue not to personally engage in notions of Original Sin) can accommodate Evangelicals who still need an historical Adam and Eve … even while accepting the preponderance of the natural evidence for Evolutiinary processes!
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“[A]t the beginning” is in the genitive. I’m no expert, but doesn’t that imply “the beginning of marriage”? The context of the discussion being marriage and not intended as a reference to the “In the beginning” of Genesis 1:1.
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That a sequential interpretation is not some unknown newcomer with no scholarly pedigree is counterargued by, for example, Michael Heiser, in the resource cited below.
Though, in my view, rather ungenerously worded, Heiser does point out that the “others outside the garden” view is not unbiblical; rather, it can be based upon “sound literary argumentation.”
Hear the way he languages that part, while seeming to be unaware of the potential for a simple sequential reading of the first chapter as prior to the events of the second and following, as being explanatory of the unremarked assumption of “others besides Adam” in the first place.
Michael Heiser - Is the Pre-Adamite Hypothesis Biblical?
Couple that with Walton’s exposition of Adam’s “deep sleep” as one of being in a state to receive a revelatory vision, and you have the basis to reject the notion that the Bible requires us to believe that Adam and Eve were the first human beings ever, but were rather a specific couple chosen for a special task out from among the prior, Genesis chapter one, pre-existing “imago Dei” humanity, by setting their story properly within the context of the unfolding story presented sequentially in successive chapters.
As far as I can tell, to date, Jack Collins nowhere explicitly deals with this full-orbed proposal.
Instead, Dr. Collins would likely be surprised at Heiser’s unenthusiastic but conciliatory tone about the whole question of “people before Adam,” much less with the explicit proposal of a sequential reading being the straightforward explanatory backdrop for it.
Would dearly love to hear you thoughtfully and clearly address this specifically, @jack.collins; it would be a privilege to hear your rationale!
Cheers!
An old, but concise link to Walton’s take on the significance of Adam’s “deep sleep,” can be found here.
Struck me as odd, or even off, at first, but it has grown on me, as a kind of further exposition of the prior bald assertion in Genesis 1:27.
I can HONESTLY see Paul having exactly these kinds of distinctions in mind as he carefully nuances Adam’s peculiar role, as compared to that of a “pre-Adamic, yet already morally-informed, while comparatively naive, pre-existing Imago Dei humanity” when he writes what would be otherwise maddeningly obtuse and indirect in Romans 5:12-14, and on into the rest of that chapter.
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” - Romans 5:12-14 NASB
Death as a punishment or consequence for sin was simply not in their experience, ken or awareness until Adam’s distorted sense of things, “the knowledge of good and evil,” entered into the equation and rendered it a universal inevitability.
Thanks be to God for providing, in Himself, a way out from underneath it!
Not to mention the apostle Paul’s perceptive arguments about the universal need for it, despite differing kinds of culpability.
I myself am not convinced that the pre-Adamites have to be morally informed.
I am including a basic, “eternity is written in their hearts,” sort of understanding to what it means to be created “in the image of God,” as a de minimus aspect of it.
A basic morality seems to be evident in most of the “nephesh” animals, much less in the humanity before Adam who had been “created in God’s image; male and female created He them,” from Genesis 1:27 --as I read it, well before the story of Adam and Eve even starts. Glad you feel free to disagree.
The mark of protection is something that is being re-interpreted in the Cain cycle.
I think it is likely derived from an original Kennite story where they as good guys WERE marked for protection!
Rereading this section seems like the best place to include this link to using a Bayesian approach to inform biblical interpretation.
Reading the first two pericopes sequentially helps to establish a developmental context for the overall metanarrative.
https://www.uzh.ch/blog/theologie-nt/2019/03/27/what-bayesian-reasoning-can-and-cant-do-for-biblical-research/
I see a priestly scribe thinking long and hard how to turn a “mark of protection” into a negative.
The amazing thing is that 2000 years of readers thinks the Biblical explication of the Mark of Cain makes some sort of reasonable conclusion.
Its one of the silliest etymoligies in Genesis… which is a book of silly etymologies!
Odd thing is, if that’s made up, the “priestly scribe” ends up bring the “Kennites” (sic) into Adam’s direct family line, making them more ancestral than, say, Abraham, despite the supposedly negative spin… Pretty silly hypothesis, for such an enormous theological tradeoff.
The existence of paranomasia is occasional, not supportive of an entire explanatory paradigm.
The same has already been demonstrated for the supposed correspondence of “Tiamat” and “tehom.”
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I am a capable family genealogist. I dont understand how you arrive at the sentence of yours that i quote.
Care to explain?