We are now branching into a full blow discussion of the garden narrative and Romans 5, I cannot commit more time to this than this post so I will offer a comment and yield the final word. I will read any responses but I’m not sitting here for a few hours and drafting replies (I spend a lot of time thinking and crafting most of my responses unlike some here just to needle with one-liners).
I don’t see the issue. Paul is doing what other authors at the time do. Blaming Adam for sin and death but also being very careful to note we are responsible for our own sin as well. Whether or not there is tension in this view itself, there is no reason for us to understand Romans 1-3 and Romans 5 in opposition to one another in Paul’s mind or to pick one over the other. Paul simply believed both. I don’t want to dig up all the references but I think Keck, in the Abingdon Commentary on Romans lays them out:
While Gen 3 does not actually say that Adam and Eve had once been immortal but became mortal because of their disobedience, Gen 3:19 and 22-24 imply that death was part of their punishment, and some early Jewish writers drew this conclusion. For example, Sir 25:24 says, “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.” And 4 Ezra 3:7 says, “And you laid on him one commandment of yours, but he transgressed it, and immediately you appointed death for him and for his descendants.” That author’s apostrophe is well known: “O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants. For what good is it, if an eternal age has been promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring death?” (8:48-49).
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Paul emphasizes how death spread to all because he is interpreting Gen 2-3; viewed theologically, he emphasizes the repetition of Adam’s sin because thereby he continues to hold humans accountable. He anticipated what the Apocalypse of Baruch said a few decades later: “For although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were in his own time, yet each… who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. . . . Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam” (2 Bar. 54:15, 19). Like 4 Ezra, Pseudo-Philo (1st c. CE) reports that God said,
“That man [the first formed, the protoplast] transgressed my ways and was persuaded by his wife, and she was deceived by the serpent. And then death was ordained for the generations of men.” Lest Adam forget what he had done, the author adds, “The Lord continued to show him the ways of paradise, and said to him, ‘These are the ways that men have lost by not walking in them, because they have sinned against me’” (13:3-8). These texts trace the dilemma to Adam, yet refuse to regard all humans as innocent victims of his deed. So too, in Rom 5:12, the accent of the last clause is on individual guilt and responsibility (so also Wedderburn 1973, 351).
These texts trace the dilemma to Adam, yet refuse to regard all humans as innocent. victims of his deed.
To these I would add the first entry Jewish historian Josephus, whom you quoted in your chapter, who clearly thought Adam and Eve were real people. A bunch of literature from around the time of Paul says this. Not to mention the genealogies in the Old and New Testament. They are not giving any indication Adam was anything other than an actual, living, human being. Viewing Adam and Eve only as archetypes of ourselves is scripturally incorrect. Viewing Adam and Eve as archetypes of ourselves is correct. There is an important distinction there. And I reiterate the conclusion is exactly what we find in Paul: sin and death is traced to Adam but we are still guilty and cannot blame him for own sin. It’s worth repeating: “These texts trace the dilemma to Adam, yet refuse to regard all humans as innocent victims of his deed.” This is what the literature at the time seems to think about Adam. Real person, real event, real consequences. But also that we repeat this and are just as guilty. For me, the rest is revisionism based on science–no matter how erudite or learned it might appear.
Yes, the evidence strongly favors Paul, like his contemporaries, viewed Adam as a literal man and the event actually happened (how wooden his literalism was I do not profess to know). Jesus didn’t die (merely?) spiritually on a Roman cross. He died physically, bodily. And he rose bodily. Whats more is in 1 Cor 15 Paul is literally defending bodily resurrection against detractors, on the basis that Jesus was bodily raised. He mentions Adam here and I can’t for the life of me see how introducing a mythical being who did not exist and who did not actually bring sin into the world or do anything serves his case. And Paul, who you agree, most likely accepts a literal Adam (I’d consider it virtually certain) makes a very clear connection between two bodily men and their actions and consequences in Romans 5. Sin and death came in through one act and Jesus deals with them. It works precisely because Adam was real. But as noted, we also repeat what Adam did.
I agree we don’t need to draw a line, but there is a line despite some people’s moral repugnance (seeing the speck in human caused bestiality while ignoring the plank of child-rape via God ordained evolution). Per metaphysics and philosophical arguments about the mind and abstract thought, I don’t think “messy biology” can in principle draw this line. I’d say it is more of an ideological prejudice some have, as opposed to careful reasoning, that makes people assume it can. I also agree their story is our story. Paul and his contemporaries are clear to point that out. But that is not all they point out. If I felt I have to choose between the Bible and science otherwise, I’d probably do the same and accept your view. I’ve been in that boat.
Of course. He personifies a number of things, including sin and death. Keck again:
What matters for him is that sin and death are intruders. They are not part of creation as God made it; as powers they are usurpers, squatters who entered the estate and now rule its inhabitants. For Christian theology, this view of sin and death is crucial: They are not traced to a flaw in creation or to some fault in the Creator. Their tyrannical presence makes sinning and dying unavoidable, but not “natural.” Paul regards them both as profoundly “unnatural”; for him, the present human condition contradicts the original condition. He draws on the ancient Near East view that death is an enemy, indeed for him the ultimate enemy, as he said in 1 Cor 15:26.
In imaging death as a power that tyrannizes and mars human existence, Paul did not abandon the literal meaning of the word “death,” the inevitable termination of physical life; nor did he simply regard it as an immutable fate or as a morally neutral “fact of life.” Rather, he not only saw it as a moral/theological issue by linking it with sin, but he also denied that it is invincible, for he viewed it through the prism of an event that broke its power— Jesus’ resurrection by the radically Other, God. For Paul, the literal and the metaphorical meanings of “death” are distinguishable but not neatly separable.
Romans 5:12 is a tough one but I will say this. Paul has no knowledge of fossils, dinosaurs or mass extinctions. We would, I am assuming, completely agree on that. What serves as Paul’s foundation is Genesis and in that story there is literal a tree of life. So even if Paul thought animals died without sinning, that is irrelevant. The nature of Adam and Eve without special access to a gift of God (the tree of life in this story) is to die like the animals. There is no contradiction or tension here. Animals pose no problem because I think it’s virtually certain Paul is aware of the tree of life and paradise lost. As you said, he, and dare I say, most commentators at the time (including the Jewish Historian Josephus that you quoted in the chapter you sent me), makes them historical beings. The natural conclusion based on what he writes is that Paul accepted the gist of the story if nothing else. Adam and Eve brought on their own mortality (privation from the tree of life). That death, including death of the soul is [edited] spreading to all.
So even though sinless, they need saving from their mortality that God gave them to begin with? I think something is missing here. We need saving from the destructive effects of sin. But here it seems we need “saving” (a Savior) from the natural world as God intended these children to originally live. In the genealogical model, our nature is to be mortal so we have no right to complain but the story starts out with humanity, at least through a representative and privation, losing the preternatural gifts of God. God wanted his special image bearing creation to accept these gifts and obey. Adam and Eve did not and lost them for all subsequent descendants. In the alternative way it almost looks like God is saving infants from the plight he originally intended them to exist in. Putting out a fire of his own making? The genealogical model starts off with God offering humans an abundance of grace and life–the sample principle that led to the creation of the universe is on display in this model–love overflowing. I can’t fault God as we are entitled to nothing but one way of looking at it really seems more consistent with the love I see via the Incarnation. There is something comforting about understanding that God didn’t intend for metaphysical human children to get cancer. Of course, I can’t answer why he did’t create an infinite number of gardens. Only point out that God’s solution to humanity’s fall is far more gracious than we sinners deserve.
Natural yes, but Adam and Eve were placed in a special garden. They had access to the tree of life. Their mortality occurred due to their disobedience. That is exactly the Catholic position and based on the writing of Paul and his contemporaries, that is where the beliefs comes from.
Fundamentalists? This issue goes well beyond fundamentalist interpretation. There is no need to instinctiely take the discussion into an anti-fundamentalist and anti evangelical way. The the plain sense of Paul and all his contemporaries is that Adam is a real human being who brought real consequences into the world. That is not fundamentalsm. That is simply sound exegesis. Those of us are following Paul are not prioritizing materialism over metaphor. We are giving scripture and Church tradition its due reverence and weight as Christians. The only arguable blind spot in those who are champion a metaphorical/mythical/archetypal/paradigmatic/symbolic-only Adam because they have waved the white flag at science and assume Scripture must be wrong here. It is not quality exegesis that leads us to this position. It is quality science. That is the blind spot: reducing parts of scripture we should not, solely to metaphor/myth/archetype/paradigm/symbol because of materialism. A great way forward, as I have attempted to argue and in my opinion, is in a genealogical Adam and Eve that distinguishes biological human animals from metaphysical humans, that treats the fall/original sin as a privation. We get to keep the best of both worlds --whether it’s provable or not. None of these theories are to be honest.
Vinnie
