Does It Really Matter Whether Adam Was the First Man?

Mike Reeves: Evangelical Christians have generally resisted the demythologization of the Gospels whereby, for example, the resurrection of Jesus is interpreted as a mythical portrayal of the principle of new life. Indeed, they have argued strongly that it’s the very historicity of the resurrection that is so vital. However, when it regards the biblical figures of Adam and Eve, there has been a far greater willingness to interpret them as mythical or symbolic. The simple aim of this article is to show that, far from being a peripheral matter for fussy literalists, it is biblically and theologically necessary for Christians to believe in Adam as a historical person who fathered the entire human race. Adam Was a Historical Person Textual Evidence The early chapters of Genesis sometimes use the word ’ādām to mean “humankind” (e.g., Gen. 1:26–27), and since there is clearly a literary structure to those chapters, some have seen the figure of Adam as a literary device, rather than a historical

read more Does It Really Matter Whether Adam Was the First Man?

Why the Good News Turns Bad Without Adam

Mike Reeves: Picture the scene: George Whitefield has just been preaching. Everywhere, eyes are shining and people are talking of the wonderful grace of Christ. Thousands of hearts have been overthrown and melted; lives have been remade. Now, if the church gives up believing in a historical Adam, we will never see such scenes again. Too far? A bit strong? Not at all. For it is not just that the biblical genealogies depict Adam as a historical figure, not just that Paul can build core arguments on his belief that Adam was as real a man as Christ (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15). Adam has a significance in the Bible that far outstrips the simple number of mentions he gets. In fact, he has a significance so great that without him we no longer have a recognisably Christian gospel. Given space restraints, I will point out just two ways mythologizing Adam uproots the gospel. (1) It Makes God Bad Let’s

read more Why the Good News Turns Bad Without Adam

More than Adam lost

“Christ was the second Adam. He came not only to bear our punishment for us but also to obtain for us the righteousness and life that Adam had to secure by his obedience. He delivered us from guilt and punishment and placed us at the end of the road Adam had to walk, not at the beginning. He gives us much more than we lost in Adam, not only the forgiveness of sin and release from punishment but also and immediately – in faith – the not-being-able to sin and not-being-able to die.” (Reformed Dogmatics Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, Baker Academic, p. 395). (HT: Guy Davies)