Thanks Marshall for a thoughtful reply. So basically the question would be, is Gen 4&5 inspired or a Jewish identity story to close the gap from Adam to Abraham (chapter 12), the start of Israel, God calling Abraham establishing the link to Genesis 1 which obviously is written in a Jewish framework, 6 days of work, rest (the Sabbath) on the 7th day.
Something else as I am new and could not find an answer in the about-section of the forum. How did humans arrive on the planet? Did they descended from an animal? Are humans not descended from animals but are they a special supernatural act of the Lord as Genesis 1 reads?
This is one puzzling sentence of Paul. No doubt I am a sinner in need for Christ but I (and neither Paul and everybody else) had the same chance as A&E in paradise to stay out of trouble and never die.
Why weren’t we given the same opportunity?
It’s this type of reasoning (among others) why I am inclined to believe in Christian evolution after all, without going there
That is a dividing question, isn’t it. I tend to believe that God created humankind through his sustaining power using evolutionary means. Is that supernatural or natural? I think that is a matter of semantics. As God created nature, it is all the same thing in my eyes.
Now, you can have your cake and eat it too if you go with the genealogical Adam concept put forth by Joshua Swamidass. That idea is basically that Adam and Eve were separated or created separately from existing humanity which had evolved. You can explore that in depth over at his site on Peaceful Science.
I will have to agree with @ProDeo here and say that Adam and Eve are literal people but they are not the first humans to be made. I believe that Adam and Eve (of which was not their original names) were among other early humans during the migration out of Africa. The genealogy is meant to lead up to Abram and the Jewish people.
I like to start with the obvious: Romans 5 isn’t the beginning of the letter. By that point Paul has already established how all kinds of people sin and need rescue. Paul doesn’t rest his theology or his thinking about sin, death and salvation on Adam.
Romans 1 retells the Eden story without Adam, Eve, a serpent, a prohibited tree or magic fruit. Yet it still speaks of humans (collectively) having some knowledge of and connection to God from their creation, but breaking that fellowship in a misguided pursuit of wisdom that leaves them confused about creatures and Creator. Certainly there are questions about God’s “wrath” and “giving over”: it’s not an easy passage. But once again, like Eden, both accounts give a theological take on the history of humankind while also confronting us with our own story. Paul just does it with less symbolism and more rhetoric.
In the second half of Romans 5, Paul restates some points he’s already made, now using the figure of Adam parallelled to Christ. And much like his muddle over which Corinthians he baptized, here he seems to recognize the complexity that overwhelms his parallel just after he commits it to paper. Before he finishes his first sentence, he starts clarifying all the ways the two are not equal and opposite. The passage ends up focusing more on differences than similarities, and even the similarities have to blur things to make the two compatible (such as collapsing Jesus’ lifelong obedience into “one man’s act of righteousness,” as @Jay313 noted up-thread).
Since Adam functions as a sermon illustration, not as the evidential basis for Paul’s thinking, the weakness of the parallel doesn’t undermine it. It gives us a mental picture and exposes how much greater Christ is than Adam. Focusing on some of the phrasing, such as “Adam to Moses,” could suggest Adam was a man who lived at a certain time. But when Adam is read as both a symbol for each human and the first humans (much like the “those”/“they” of Romans 1:18–23), “Adam to Moses” can still convey from the beginning of humanity to the giving of the law. A symbolic reading can still make sense of that phrase, and it makes much better sense of how Paul explains death’s dominion by simultaneously pointing to Adam and saying “because all sin.”
Surely an Adam could have existed. He does not have to be the precise Literary one from Genesis.
In English culture the tales of Robin Hood far exceed the probable reality of him and his actions.
It is only if you try to cling to some sort of notion of inerrancy or biblical accuracy that the precision of early Genesis comes in to play.
The Bible works on many levels. We only really run into difficulties when we start trying to impose certain values or ideas onto it instead of taking it at its word. Or understanding what it is teaching us
The question must always be
Does Adam have to be real… for the Gospel?.. For the Story to have meaning? For Jesus or Paul to refer to it?
My answer to all these is no, but there are many who find some of those questions more difficult. (et al)
Yes and Amen. The Bible is a complex collection of documents written to a diverse group of people, who lived a long time ago, who often thought very differently to us, and had many values that we might not naturally share. I think we run into all sorts of problems when try to make the Bible answer 21st Century western questions or impose contemporary values on it.
Well, applying it to current questions and life is the point of reading it isn’t it? I think what you really mean is that we have to take those things into consideration, and read it in its cultural and historical context. I certainly agree with you there, which is why the literal approach loses relevance when applied to modern life.
I find a non-literal Adam and Eve plausible for a couple of reasons.
First Adam just means human in Hebrew. If you read the Genesis 2 account substituting the “earthling” or the “human” every time you see Adam it reads much more like Adam being portrayed as a type of all humans and our shared experience.
Many interpret Genesis to teach that humans were created immortal and became mortal after sin. However, I think the most natural reading of Scripture implies the opposite: ‘from the dust’, implies we were created mortal yet the tree of life in the story symbolized that although we were created mortal we were created with the potential for immortality.
For example in Ezekiel it speaks prophetically of a divine ruler who though he a god will become mortal like a man. Implying that angelic beings were created to be immortal yet some became mortal, but for humans the Bible seems to be saying we were created moral like animals yet through the death and resurrection of Jesus we can obtain immortality.
Romans 7 is another passage where Paul does a speech in character of Adam dramatizing the experience of all humanity living in the flesh, setting up Romans 8 where he speaks of life in the Spirit.
Secondly if you compare it with other ANE creation myths, no one else was ever trying to tell primordial history (ie stories of events that took place before the dawn of civilization) in a way of scientifically telling the story in a way that conveyed exactly the facts of how it happened. Instead they were telling stories in a way that expounded upon what they believed about the diving, what it means to be human and how the divine and humans relate to one another.
It seems strange to me to demand that Israel told there stories in a way more akin to post-enlightenment modern Western culture rather than to the ANE culture where it was written.
I may be peculiar, but for me the issue of the Original Couple is not whether they existed or not. The power or the meaning of the original Couple is the story of the Fall. or Original Sin.
If the story of the Fall does not ring true, then it makes no difference as to whether the Original Couple were actual human beings or literary figures or whatever.
If there was no original sinner there can be no original sin. The fall itself fails on the level of the reality of a tree that imbues knowledge. Not to mention the sheer ineptness of God for allowing it. Do we really think that God did not want us to be sentient? (which is the result of eating from the tree of knowledge)
No, the meaning of Genesis 2-5 is not as simple as “the fall”. If God is God then man cannot undo all His good work in one fell swoop of disobedience. Sin is the result of sentience, not eating an apple…
The value of Genesis 2-5 is rooted in the origins of the Judaism and the emphasis placed on heritage. There are lessons about temptation, sin and responsibility (the excuses were futile). There is theology in the bonding of male and female (Male chauvinism?) and the place of man in the Universe. There is a counterpoint for salvation inasmuch as Paul uses it to emphasise that one man can make a difference, be it Adam or Christ. But we can do a lot of damage trying to rectify all the details into theology. Especially when people start trying to doctrinise the use of animal fur for clothing, as opposed to fig leaves or claim that physical death is caused by Adam’s Original sin.
I think maybe Roger is saying that the theological importance is in the historicity of the fall of humanity, not in the historicity of Adam. If that is what he is saying, I agree. The Genesis narrative could be a totally mythologized presentation of something that happened, even though the historical details were lost.
If the garden was not real, how did humanity fall? Is humanity actually fallen? Or is that just an excuse for the existence of Christianity?
God created everything “Good”. Would that not include humanity? Are we claiming that man can undo God’s goodness?
Forgiveness is on an individual basis. Perhaps there is no need to make it anything else? Perhaps righteous purity is not so much impossible as “Practically impossible” due to the hardness of it to achieve. In life, sometimes we seem to be confronted with “the lesser of two evils” both of which would be termed a sin. So perhaps it is the circumstance, not the nature that makes man sinful?
I am a firm believer that Original Sin, in any shape, form or derivation, is false.
We don’t necessarily know the historical facts surrounding it.
I would say the Bible and personal and corporate human experience clearly teach that.
Christianity exists because of Christ, not fallen humanity. I believe God intended to become incarnate and join himself to his creation to complete his creative work of redeeming of all things as his plan A, not his plan B because humans sinned.
I don’t think the Hebrew word implies morality. It implies something being fit and proper and functioning in its intended way in the order God set up.
No. But Christians are claiming when it comes to moral goodness, humans have a choice to rebel against God’s rule. That doesn’t nullify his place as rightful ruler.
