My disagreement is focusing on ancestral inheritance from Adam, as if someone not descended from him would therefore not be human or couldn’t be saved by Christ. I also disagree with making what we are saved from a matter of what we have inherited. In many accounts of original sin, conversion seems to be about asking Jesus to correct our flawed “condition” rather than how we repent of our rebellion against God and injustices to others. It becomes almost clinical, and I don’t think that’s how we should look at our own sin.
We have very different ways of reading Romans 5. For me, it’s important that all these statements come in chapter 5, long after Paul has already established that all sin and fall short of God’s glory. Paul starts that in Romans 1 where his account of how humans fall has no Adam and no “one man” but rather a vague “they.” God creates the world and is revealed to humanity (1:20). Humans feign wisdom while turning from their creator to follow another creature in rebellion (1:22–25). They know this warrants their death (1:32). Eden is retold as the story of humanity, not just one couple.
While the number of people involved isn’t specified, their “ungodliness” and “injustice” are clear. The sins Paul talks about are vividly real: “Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (1:29–31). It seems over the top, but then Paul insists in 2:1 that his audience is “doing the very same things”! The problem isn’t merely people back then or gentiles or Greeks – the problem is simply people. Those given advantages, such as the Jews, didn’t fare better. “There is no one who is righteous” (3:10). That includes every people group. “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:22–23).
When Paul says “all have sinned,” he means actually committed sins, not inherited a sin nor contracted a deprivation. This is all established in the first three chapters. So when we get to the second half of Romans 5, Paul doesn’t need to finally tell us how sin entered the world and spread or how we need a saviour. That’s already been done! But it seems that Paul has recognized that his argument so far is hard to follow. He’s dealt with caveats (such as the gentile who by nature does what the law requires, and perhaps will be excused when they are judged by Jesus). He’s given a very nuanced view of the law. Many in his audience are going to be lost by now.
So Paul transposes his whole argument to a new key. He’s talked about the human condition of Greeks and Jews as well as Christ’s gift, but now he compresses it into a man-vs-man. He dispenses with most of the nuances and dispenses with portraying diverse groups of people. He telescopes everything into a contest between two champions and their uniform followers.
To make things simple, Paul reduces pluralities to “one.” Paul loves doing this. Elsewhere, all our baptisms are the “one baptism”; all that Christ offers is our “one hope”; all believers are Christ’s bride, or members of his body, or stones that form one temple. So here, to get a proper foil to the one man Jesus Christ, Paul collapses the humans he originally called “they” and Genesis calls Adam and Eve into “one man.” And because Adam’s story has one transgression, he likewise collapses Jesus’ entire life into a singular “act of righteousness.” This paragraph of Romans isn’t the place for nuance. Paul’s done that already. Here he’s going for something more punchy.
Paul does something similar in 1 Corinthians 15. While in Romans he collapses everything to two men, Adam and Christ, to Corinth he collapses his argument to two men named Adam as well as someone named Death. Read Romans 5:12–21 as if it’s the whole letter and, yes, it seems to make sin entirely the fault of a literal man named Adam. Or, read 1 Corinthians 15:42–57 on its own, and you might think Adam’s predicament is entirely due to a literal person named Death.
Focusing on this one paragraph, this one man-vs-man illustration, to figure out what Paul is teaching about humanity and sin and salvation is just as bad as expecting a pastor’s sermon illustration to fully articulate every point they’re trying to get across. It misreads the genre of this paragraph and misses its place and purpose in Paul’s letter.
(And really, allowing this paragraph to use vivid language that can’t be taken hyper-literally is good for your position too. The Catholic view is that original sin is an inherited deprivation of sanctifying grace. That’s as far from a literalist take of “Through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” as my own view is.)
This is already way too long. But if you want to see how I get even more into the weeds of how I read Romans 5, you can check out my earlier thread on why Adam is not Jesus’ type.
Yes, I see Adam and Eve’s story as being the human story. Sinning doesn’t make us human, but replaying their story confirms that them’s us.