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New Evidence for Two Human Origins

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Friday, June 25, 2010

WAS ADAM THE FIRST MAN TO SIN?










This post shows that Romans 5:12 does not teach that sin first entered the human race when Adam sinned.
Revised June 15, 2014

This post is a copy of chapter 13 from my book New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science (2009 edition).1
 
…just as David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven,
“And whose sins have been covered.
“Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD will not take into account” (Rom. 4:6-9).2

Doesn’t the Bible Teach That Sin Entered the Human Race at the Time of Adam?

Romans 5:12a states, “Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin…” Some people think that Romans 5:12a teaches that sin and death entered the human race at the time of Adam. If this is the actual teaching of this verse, pre-Adamic people could not have existed because, if they did exist, they definitely experienced death. A study of Romans 5 will show that verse 12 does not teach that sin and death entered the human race at the time of Adam. In this chapter, we shall investigate the true meaning of this verse.


Please observe Romans 5:12a in its context continuing through verse 13:
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.
Justification by Faith

The epigraph at the opening of this chapter speaks of the glorious Christian doctrine of justification by faith. For God to remain a righteous Judge of the world, He cannot forgive anyone’s sins unless they have been paid for by Christ. This is why the perfect Son of God chose to suffer and die on the cross for us. He paid for our sins, so that if we come to Him in faith with the right heart attitude, He will forgive us our sins. God reckons that we are righteous even though we actually sometimes commit sins. David can therefore say,
Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD will not take into account. (Rom. 4:8)
 The concept of justification by faith is difficult to understand so Paul illustrates it by comparing the work that the Lord Jesus Christ did for us to bring us justification and life with the act of disobedience which Adam committed. Paul gave the illustration of how man dies as a result of Adam’s sin to illustrate and to elucidate God’s imputation of Christ’s righteousness to those who believe. Because we are trying to understand the imputation of Adam’s sin to the human race, we shall reverse the approach from Paul’s illustration and use the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to explain the imputation of Adam’s sin to the human race. Let us look at the doctrine of justification to see what is being illustrated by Adam’s sin in the garden.

The Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross to take the punishment that was to be ours for our sins. In so doing, He suffered the wrath of God as a substitute for the one who places his faith in Jesus. The blood shed by the Lord Jesus Christ becomes our propitiation when we truly believe in Jesus. That Jesus became our propitiation means that He became our sacrifice, our substitute who experienced God’s wrath for us. There is more to it than this. If God had passed over the sins of those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ without Christ’s payment for these sins on the cross, God would have violated His own righteous character because he would have failed to act as a righteous Judge. But this is unthinkable. Romans 3:25-26 speaks of how the death of Christ on the cross made it possible for God to “be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (verse 26b). Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, God remains just even though He justifies those who believe.

Understanding the Two Types of Sin

Next we must realize that there are two kinds of sin spoken of in Romans 5: (1) sin that is committed without the sinners having received from God a command with a punishment for disobeying and (2) sin that is the breaking of a command of God which has a penalty declared for those who break it. The first time that God ever laid down a law with the penalty of death was to Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam ate of the tree in deliberate disobedience to God in spite of his knowledge of the penalty. It was this sin that brought death to the human race; none of the sins that were committed by the pre-Adamites brought death to the human race. If this is true, why did the pre-Adamites die? Adam and Eve were placed in the garden to demonstrate to all people of all time and to the angels that the heart of man is rebellious and sinful. They demonstrated man’s sinfulness just as God knew they would. Therefore, God, knowing ahead of time that Adam would willfully sin in disobedience to the His command, created pre-Adamic people so that they would experience death. Because they were men of flesh, as Adam was, God imputed the sin of Adam to them. Adam was taking this test for men of all ages.

Paul wrote of both kinds of sin in his epistle to the Romans: (1) the sin men commit by disobeying a law or command of God and (2) the sin men commit who sin against their own knowledge of right and wrong and against their own consciences. Paul refers to these two types of sin in Romans 2:12:
12 For [1] all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law; and [2] all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
The Bible teaches that all men are accountable for their actions whether or not they were Jewish and lived under the Law or not. This is because
…His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20)
Adam’s Sin Passed to All Men by Imputation

Paul wanted to illustrate the doctrine of justification, so he used the example of the sin of Adam to show how God imputes the action of one person to a whole multitude of people. God imputed Adam’s sin to the human race, and God imputes Christ’s righteous to all those who believe in Jesus. God had known that the Lord Jesus Christ would die for man’s sins from the foundations of the world; therefore, when Abraham, who lived many years before the death of Christ, believed God, God could declare him justified! (Please see Genesis 15:6.) Paul refers to this Old Testament passage:
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations shall be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. (Gal. 3:6-9)
The sin of Adam was likewise in the foreknowledge of God, and as justification was available for those who believed before Christ’s death, so the experience of death, which was a result of Adam’s disobedience, was a part of man’s experience from the creation of pre-Adamic man.

It is important to take note that Adam was not necessarily created with immortality in himself; he had not only to refrain from eating from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil, but apparently he may have had to eat from the Tree of Life; we say this because the Bible says that he could have lived forever after his transgression if he had eaten of the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22). The frequency of his need for eating of its fruit is not stated, possibly only once would have been sufficient or maybe once every 1,000 years would have been enough.

That Paul had in his mind a concept which included two kinds of sin can be seen by observing the way he shows that God imputed Adam’s sin to the whole human race. Paul made a bold assertion in verse 12:
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…. (Rom. 5:12; emphasis mine)
When He said, “so death spread to all men, because all sinned….” he meant that God saw Adam’s decision to rebel against the command of God as representing the heart of each person who has ever lived or who will live. In other words, God imputed this sin to all people of all time. We conclude this from his argument:
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. (Rom. 5:13-14, emphasis mine)
Paul uses these words to prove that Adam’s sin was imputed by God upon the whole human race. His logic is that since people died who lived between Adam and Eve’s time and the giving of the Mosaic Law, they also must have sinned when Adam sinned; otherwise they would not have died. Since everyone sinned (from God’s point of view) when Adam sinned, all die.

Let us make a logical analysis of these statements:
1. Adam’s sin was different from those who lived between him and the time God gave the Law of Moses because it was a sin against a command with a punishment for disobedience; that is, it was a “transgression” as Paul calls it in verse 15. From this, we can conclude that Paul distinguishes between the type of sin that occurs when a person transgresses a law and sin that is not a transgression of a law or command with penalty.

2. There was a time between Adam’s sin and Moses when men lived without a law from God; the Law of Moses had not yet been given. God’s command to Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit and His warning of the consequences had not been given to those people who lived between Adam and Moses.

3. Those people died as did Moses and the Israelites.

4. “…but sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Rom. 5:13). Here Paul means that if you set up a particular action concerning which no law has been given and you take this action, sin will not be imputed. For instance, if you drive seventy miles per hour on a highway where there is no speed limit, you will not be cited for a violation based upon your speed.

5. Paul is saying that those people who lived between Adam and Moses did not trespass against a law which results in physical death, yet they died. Paul reasons that the transgression of Adam must have been imputed upon all people, including those people who lived between Adam and Moses, because “sin is not imputed when there is no law” (v. 13). Paul’s conclusion is that when Adam sinned “all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). In verse 15 he states: “For if by the trespass of the one [Adam] the many died...”
So indeed it was the trespass of Adam that caused all other men to die. Adam was our representative to be tested for the presence of sin and rebellion in human flesh; he dreadfully flunked the test. We know that everyone was involved in Adam’s sin because everyone suffers the result of Adam’s transgression. This result was death. Before Paul gives his argument, he states his conclusion: “and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12b). This statement need not be limited to mean that only those who lived after Adam were the recipients of death from his transgression. We can understand this if we realize that God set up a test for man in the garden which was to show everyone everywhere of all time that man is a sinner. From this we may understand that man’s guilt unto death from Adam’s sin was not due to the passage of time or to a relationship through descent but rather was due to man’s participation in manhood. Men have been sinners, composed of sinful flesh, whether they lived before Adam or after Adam or whether they descended from Adam or God created them before Adam. Just as Abraham was justified before Christ paid the penalty of Abraham’s sin, the pre-Adamites died because the sin of Adam was imputed to them as well as to Adam.

Our salvation as Christians depends upon the concept of imputation. Consider the passage which includes Romans 5:18-19:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men; even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
An Incorrect Interpretation

Some people think that all men became guilty due to Adam’s sin because they believe that all men actually sinned with Adam when he sinned in the garden. They usually point to Hebrews 7:9-10 which states:
And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.
They say that we actually sinned when Adam sinned, becaues they believe we were in the loins of Adam as Levi was in the loins of his father, Abraham. But this quote from Hebrews is from the context of allegory and in the context of relating the Melchizedek priesthood to the priesthood of Christ, the Son of God. It is true that the connection was based upon family relationship. But was it necessarily the result of a physical relationship to Abraham that Levi is seen as paying tithes to Melchizedek, or was the actual connecting link of this biblical argument the family social tie, which was a result of the physical filial tie between Levi and Abraham? It seems the latter is also possible. The concept that Levi was somehow actually there or involved in the act must be incorrect. This conclusion concerning Adam’s sin must be incorrect because, if this view were true, the Lord Jesus Christ would have sinned before he was even born for He was also a blood descendant of Adam. (Christ’s lineage goes back to Adam through His mother, Mary, and her ancestors.) According to the Bible, Jesus was sinless, and His sinlessness was a requirement for the efficacy of his atoning sacrifice.

At the cross, mankind’s sin was imputed to Christ as the Bible says:
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21)
Jesus had our sins imputed upon him even at his flogging in the judgment hall. Isaiah 53:5 says,
But he was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
Our sin which was imputed upon Him did not destroy his sinless sacrifice for our sin. The sin which Adam committed was also imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That only one man sinned when Adam sinned is explicitly stated in Romans 5:19:
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many [all people of all time] were made [Gr., kathisteemi] sinners, even so through the obedience [Christ’s willingness to go to the cross] of the One [Christ] the many will be made righteous. (emphasis mine)
Please observe that this verse does not say that through the disobedience of the many, the many were made sinners, but rather it says, “through the one man’s disobedience the many [all people of all time] were made sinners” (emphasis mine).

Therefore, the sin of Adam was imputed to the whole human race, whether the recipients lived before Adam or after Adam. Neither does it depend on whether or not man is a blood relative of Adam. Therefore, men died who lived before Adam due to Adam’s sin, and men died after Adam due to Adam’s sin.

Let me note that the Lord Jesus Christ is a descendant from the pre-Adamic first pair as well as from Adam and Eve. Noah was an ancestor of Jesus Christ, and Noah married a wife with a lifespan of about 277 years, which indicates that she had ancestors that go back to the pre-Adamic race. Of course, the same can be said of Shem, who also was an ancestor of Jesus Christ. In fact, all Christ’s ancestors from Noah on down were a blood mixture of the Adamic and pre-Adamic races or they were pure pre-Adamic. Therefore, no one needs to worry; Christ can be his Redeemer, even if he were a pure descendant of pre-Adamic man.

A Contrast between the Results of Adam’s Sin and the Results of Christ’s Obedience

Paul in this chapter is doing more than just explaining the concept of justification, he is contrasting the new spiritual life which results from justification provided by Christ with the physical death which resulted from God’s judgment which came through Adam. Please see chart 31. Paul discussed Adam’s sin to contrast his sin and its repercussions with the death of Christ and the new type of life that He was going to make possible for the believer. This new life would make it possible for the believer to have his sins forgiven, to be able to have fellowship with God, and to rest in the sure hope of eternal life. This new life is to be experienced right here in this life.

Some readers may wonder, Why is Paul’s statement in Romans 5:19 concerning the believer’s having been made righteous placed in the future tense? G. G. Findlay probably stated the correct answer in The Expositors Greek Testament. He thinks the future tense was used because only believers are included in the “many” and because their entrance into this grace happens “one after another.”3

[I will reproduce most of chart 31 from by book:
___________________________________________
CHART31: THE COMPARISON PAUL MAKES IN ROMANS 5 BETWEEN ADAM'S SIN AND CHRIST'S ACT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

                      Adam's Sin              (Contrasted with)                  Jesus Christs Act of Obedience
                      Judgment                 (Contrasted with)                  Free Gift
                      Condemnation         (Contrasted with)                  Justification
                      Death Reigns           (Contrasted with)                  Believers' Reign in Life
                                |                                                                     |
                                |                                                                     |
                                |                                                                     |
                                V                                                                     V
                       Distributed                                                          Distributed
                              to                                                                       to
                       Each Person                                                       Each Believer
_____________________________________________

Romans 5:19, quoted above, contains in two different places a word that is an important word for our discussion; therefore, we shall look at the meaning of this Greek word. David Brown comments on its meaning as it is used in this verse: “The significant word…[kathisteemi, my transliteration] twice here rendered ‘made,’ does not signify to ‘work a change upon’ a person or thing, but to ‘establish,’ ‘constitute,’ or ‘ordain.’”4 Possibly a better translation would be the following:
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were… [established] sinners, even so through the obedience of the one the many will be …[established] righteous. (Rom. 5:19)
Paul’s Use of the Article Reveals the True Meaning of Romans 5:12

Using another approach to understanding Romans 5:12, we shall discover that the Greek article before each of the occurrences of the word “sin” in this verse is very significant. It specifies a certain type of sin; it means a sin committed against an actual command of God as distinguished from a sin which is not against a direct command of God. We call each of the books of the Bible that the apostle Paul wrote an “epistle,” which means “letter.” Actually, some of these epistles are much more than letters, they are theological treatises. Since the book of Romans is a theological treatise as well as a letter to the church at Rome, we should not be surprised to find words and phrases used in a precise rather technical manner.

Even though the Greek article had a normal usage, the writer had freedom to deviate from this normal usage. Dana and Mantey observe: “Deviation from this normal usage may occur at the will of the writer.”5 If you look at an exhaustive concordance and study the verses in Romans where the word sin, hamartia, is found, you will discover that Paul places the article before this word where he is employing it to mean a transgression of a law of God, but if he is referring to sin which is not in violation to a law of God, he does not include the article. I shall now include an example from Romans 7:5-14 in which this selective employment of the article before the word sin is illustrated; I...[colored the the occurrences of sin that are preceded with the [Greek] article with the same color that I colored the words which show that this reference to sin is a sin against law, and I emphasized the word sin or the words the sin by using bold type:
5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions [lit. Greek: the passions of the sins], which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

7 What shall we say then? Is the Law [no article] sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know [the] sin except through the Law; for I would not have known
about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
          8 But [the] sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of
             every kind; for apart from the Law [no article] sin is dead.
9 And I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, [the] sin became alive, and I died;

10 and this commandment which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;

11 for [the] sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

12 So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

13 Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather, it was [the] sin, in order that it might be shown to be [no article] sin by effecting my death through that which is good [that is, the Law], that through the commandment [the] sin, might become utterly sinful.

14 For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to [the] sin.
From this passage, we can discern that Paul distinguishes the sin that is in rebellion and disobedience to a law of God from sin in general by his use of the article before the word “sin.” When Paul writes in verse 8, “for apart from law, [no article] sin was dead,” he means that his rebellious, disobedient spirit was inactive when there was no commandment to disobey. “When the commandment came, [the] sin became alive, and I died” (v.9). Here he employs the article before “sin,” because now his sin is being directed against a law.

An example of the use of the word “sin” where no article precedes it is found in Romans 3:20b:
For through the Law comes the knowledge of [no article] sin.
Paul says that through the commands of the law comes the realization that our hearts contain sin. Here Paul omits the article because it refers to the sin that we possessed, sin that we were unaware of since God’s law was unknown to us.

Both the English translation of Romans 7:25 and the translation of Romans 8:2 contain the expression “the law of sin.” In chapter 7, Paul is explaining how difficult it is to continuously do right when the flesh, aggravated by the requirement of the law, wants to sin. He concludes in Romans 7:25:
…So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of [the] sin.
From the context, the sin spoken of is the sin that is in disobedience to God’s written law. Compare this verse in which the article is placed before the word “sin” with Romans 8:2 where the phrase “the law of sin” is also used but without the article before the word “sin”:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of [no article] sin and death.
This verse speaks of the continual power to do right, supplied by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Paul asserts that this principle of life will give to the one who walks in the Spirit victory over the fleshly impulses that are deep within the heart and are not necessarily aggravated by a command of God. What victory the Spirit of Christ can give us! Here we can appreciate how exact the Holy Spirit inspired this dissertation on sin. “Death” in Romans 8:2 is not referring to physical death but to a way of living that is characterized by spiritual death.

Now let us examine the verse that we are concerned about, along with the verse that follows it:
Therefore, just as through one man [the] sin entered into the world, and death through [the] sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law [no article] sin was in the world; but [no article] sin is not imputed when there is no law. (Rom. 5:12-13)
You see, since Paul includes the article before “sin” in both appearances in verse 12, he is only speaking of sin which is in disobedience to a God-given command. On the other hand, Paul omits the article before “sin” in verse 13 because Paul was speaking about sin that was in the world before the Jewish law was given.

When Paul makes the statement “sin is not imputed when there is no law,” he is speaking of God’s dealing with us in this life. In the Day of Judgment, God will judge people whether or not they were living under God’s revealed law or not:
For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law; and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law…on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. (Rom. 2:12-16)
The Gentiles create their own moral code which often coincides with God’s law:
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. (Rom. 2: 14-15)
For your convenience in further study, I have listed in appendix K the verses in which sin occurs in Romans with an indication as to whether or not the article is employed.

What the Greek Verb Indicates

Romans 5 teaches that Adam was the first man (Eve excluded) to disobey a direct command of God. It does not teach that Adam was the first man to ever sin. The Greek word translated “spread” in verse 12 simply means in this context “to go.” This is stated in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature under the second definition: “2. simply come, go: …of death: to all men Rom. 5:12”7 The tense of this verb is aorist, which, as stated by Dana and Mantey, “presents the action or event as a ‘point,’ and hence is called ‘punctiliar.’” They also describe the aorist with this description: “The fundamental significance of the aorist is to denote action simply as occurring, without reference to its progress.”8 The text is not indicating that death was passed from generation to generation, from person to person but rather that it simply went to the whole race of men.

Summary

We saw that Paul is not bringing into his discussion the subject of Adam’s sin in order to give a history of the entrance of sin into the world, but rather he is using the results of Adam’s sin to illustrate the concept of imputation. He introduces it in order to contrast the results of Adam’s sin to the results of Christ’s obedience when He went to the cross to take the penalty for man’s sins.

We found that Romans 5:19 would best be translated, “many were… [constituted] sinners,” rather than, “many were made sinners.” They became sinners by imputation.

We saw that the Bible teaches that there are two kinds of sins: (1) sin which is against God’s will but is not a sin against a command (or written law of God) and (2) sin which is in direct violation of God’s command and law. We observed that Paul makes discretionary use of the article before sin. From this it may be seen that Romans 5:12 is telling us only that the sin of disobedience to a command of God first entered the world when Adam sinned. This passage simply does not deal with the question of when sinful people began to inhabit the world. The subject was sin that was against a specific command of God. God had prescribed the penalty of death for Adam and Eve because they refused to obey this command. This meant not only death for Adam and Eve but death for the whole human race. Adam was the representative of the human race who was tested for us all. He failed the test, thus demonstrating to all, both in Heaven and on Earth, that the human race is rebellious and sinful at heart.
____________________________
1Gary T. Mayer’s book New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science (Bloomington, IN, Milton Keynes, UK: AuthorHouseTM, 2009), 172-73.
2Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 9172, 1973, 1975, 1977, by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
3G. G. Findlay, “St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians,” in The Expositors Greek Testament, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 2, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans), 630.
4Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary Critical, Experimental, and Practical on the Old and New Testaments, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1946, reprinted 1990), vol. 3, part 2:222.
5Dana and Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament (New York: The Macmilllan Company, 1955), 141.
6Arndt, William F. and Gingrich, F. Wilbur, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 4th ed., (A translation and adaptation of Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-Deutsches Worterbuch au den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der ubrigen urchristlichen Literatur). (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 193.
7Dana and Mantey, A Manual Grammar, 194.
8Ibid., 193.

17 comments:

  1. Greek expert Daniel Wallace says Romans 5:12ff isn't talking about justification:
    http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2010/06/greek-expert-daniel-wallace-on-romans.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank for your comment. Please let me explain that as the "Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible" labels Romans 5 "Results of Justification," Paul is explaining the results of justification by faith in Romans 5:12ff. As Adam's sin resulted in death for mankind, so Christ's act of obedience resulted in life for all who believe. But this life that is given to all who believe is theirs through their justification. As verse 18 says, "So then as through one transgression there resulted comdemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men." (NASB)As is stated in "Expositor's Greek Testament" [W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1967), vol. 2, 630.], "When God justifies the sinner, he enters into and inherits life." So justification undergirds Romans 5:12ff.

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  3. Hi,

    Sorry for this late response, a lot of stuff came up in my life (nothing tragic, thankfully), including food poisoning the last few days. I simply have been unable to be online for more than maybe 15 minutes a day over the last week or so.

    I'm not sure what you mean by "Results" of Justification. On one hand, it seems you agree that it is speaking of "sanctification," since "sanctification" springs from justification, but on the other hand you seem to be saying Rom 5:12ff is speaking of what Justification is based on. Please clarify.

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  4. Hi Nick,

    I have been trying to post you a comment, but it will not post it. Sorry. I will keep trying.
    Gary

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  5. Hi Nick,

    I am saying that this passage is comparing the results of Adam's sin (which was death for all people) to the obedient life and substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus (which results in life for all who believe). By doing this, he brings out one of the results of justification by faith in Christ. Justification opens up the grace of God to a believer so that God can give him the new birth through regeneration of the Holy Spirit. This gives us the power to live a new spiritual life in contrast to the death we had been living in. This new birth results in immediate and progressive sanctification. Justification also releases us from the heightened power of sin which comes from being under law (1 Cor. 15:56). Adam's act brought death; Christ's act brought life.

    People use this verse to argue that Adam was the first man to sin with the result that Adam must have been the first man. However, justification is something that is imputed by God. Adam's sin was imputed to all men whether they lived before or after Christ. Paul is careful to use the Greek article before "sin" each time he uses the word in Romans 5:12. This is because he is referring to an act of sin that was committed against a commandment of God. This had never been done before Adam and Eve were created.

    My point is that neither in Romans 5:12 nor in other biblical passages does the Bible teach that Adam was the first human being. These verses that have been thought to teach this are dealt with in my book.

    I hope this clears up what is my understanding of this passage; however, if not, let me know.

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  6. I believe Adam's sin negatively affected us all, and required grace for all of us to be saved, but I don't believe it took place in a framework of "imputation." The term "impute" simply is never used like that. Further, the term "impute" isn't really used in reference to salvation. Romans 4 uses the Greek word "logizomai," popularly translated "impute," but it doesn't mean "impute" in the sense most think. It rather means "reckon what is in fact true of the object," so if Abraham's faith is reckoned as righteousness, that means God reckoned faith as a genuinely righteous act.

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  7. You may be right. My point is that Adam's sin implicated us all in his sin because he represented the human race. However, I don't believe that he made us become sinners because we descended from him. I don't believe that through the ages we have not all descended from Adam. I believe that the Bible teaches that the descendants of Adam married into an existing race created as described in Genesis 1.

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  8. I am sorry. I made a mistake on my last reply above. I meant to say, "I believe that through the ages we have not all descended from Adam. I believe that the Bible teaches that the descendants of Adam married into an existing race created as described in Genesis 1."

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  9. I'm not sure what you're saying in your last two posts. How can we not all descend from Adam if he is the original set of parents? If there were multiple "adams" out there, that goes against Scripture and the notion Jesus came to save based on the sin of a specific Adam.

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  10. Maybe I should explain here where I am coming from. I thought that I would get an answer to the seeming contradictions between science and the Bible while I was in seminary, but this did not happen. After seminary I began to read the young earth model; this lasted, I suppose, over twenty years. Then I realized that I could no longer hold this view and move to the progressive creation view of Hugh Ross. Then I realized that this model was not working. So I got desperate and decided to study it for myself and write up my conclusions in a book, which I did. The book is New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science. I found that if you analyze the decrease in the life spans of the patriarchs’ given in the Bible, you can show mathematically that the descendants of Adam and Eve married into an existing human race. This very nicely harmonizes the Bible and science. To put it all together, I had to make the book 470 pages long. It came out in 2007 and in 2009 I republished it again under the same title mainly to eliminate some serious typos and eliminate chapter 6.

    I believe I have the evidence that I need to show that Adam was not the first man according to the Bible. That Adam was the first man is what people have been taught, and this is what you would think the Bible teaches from reading most translations of the Bible into English, but if you check out the Hebrew and Greek, you find out that a different model is taught in the Bible—one that agrees much with science. Not only do people teach that Romans 5:12 teaches this, but they point to 1 Corinthians 15:45 to also support their view. In my book on pages 321-48, I show that 1 Corinthians is not asserting that Adam was the first man of the human race, but rather that Adam was the first man of Jesus Christ’s genealogy.

    I was attempting to show in this present article that Paul is not teaching that Adam was the first man to sin, but rather that Adam was the first man to sin against a direct command of God. The pre-Adamites sinned but there was no direct command of God for them to disobey, unless to multiple and replenish the earth was one. However, in this they did obey God. On the other hand, Adam was given specific instructions not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he did just that. This proved the sinfulness of the human race; their sin comes from their flesh, according to Genesis 6:3. Mankind has always suffered death whether they lived before or after Adam because when Adam sinned, they all sinned. That is, God reckoned Adam’s sin to us all whether we lived before Adam or after Adam.

    The Bible has to be interpreted as a whole; we must fit it all together so that there are no contradictions. This is what I have attempted to do in my book. Possibly my thesis would become more understandable for you if you go to my home page and read some of my other articles. There is a little about each of them on this page. Thanks for your interest, Nick.

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  11. Hmm, this is all news to me.

    I'm not sure if your book talks about this, but I have two points I'd like to hear your input on:

    1) Some people have interpreted Gen 6 to be talking about angels coming and having sex with humans. You seem to be saying it is a parallel human race. The historical Catholic position, which the Church Fathers took and fits the Biblical evidence is that Genesis 6 is speaking of Seth's lineage intermarrying with Cain's lineage. The "sons of God" corresponds to Genesis 5 which gives the lineage of God-fearing men from Seth's line, who turned away from this with unlawful sex.

    2) You spoke of doing some calculations with folks' ages to come to your conclusions, which I'd like to see. If you are taking the lists of lineages and adding them up, that could cause problems. Many of the times, the proper reading of those lineage texts is not to be read as an immediate "father-son" relationship, but rather "father-new lineage-son". For example, "Bob son of Jim" can mean Jim had a son X who's lineage *eventually* produced Bob, and thus not necessarily a single generation with immediate paternity as we're used to using. In other words, it's to be read, "Bob *ANCESTOR* of Jim".
    Does that make sense?

    Most people think the Bible teaches the earth/Adam is 6,000 years old, which is possible, but there are good "conservative" Catholic folks I know who show reading the lineages properly the Flood took place near 5,000 BC and Adam came 11,000 BC.

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  12. Nick, to answer your first comment, my book does address this point to show that “the sons of God” are not the descendants of Seth. (1) Genesis 6:3-4 tells us that even though He was not happy with these people’s sins, their life spans would become 120 years. God does not want these people to think that all is right between them and God just because He blessed them with longer life spans. In context, the reason for the change in average life spans to 120 years was due to these intermarriages. If “the sons of God” were the spiritual descendants of Seth and the “men” were the descends of Cain, these intermarriages would not have caused a large change in life spans. In my book, I analyze the drop in life spans as recorded in the biblical genealogies to show that these intermarriages were between the descendants of Adam and Eve and the pre-Adamites.
    (2) Those who believe that “the sons of God” refer to Seth’s line, of course, believe this because they realize that sometimes such a phrase was used of religious people to show their devotion to their god. But they do not notice that the context here is one of origins. The men, the text says, “bore” daughters. These daughters of men (literally in Hebrew “the man”) were taken as wives by “the sons of God.” The distinction between the races is one based on physical origins, not spiritual devotion. Therefore, the sons of God were the race that was, through the direct creation of Adam and Eve, the descendants of God. The daughters of man were the descendants of the people who were, according to Genesis 2:4, the descendants of the heavens and the earth. It should also be noted that in Job the angels (not fallen angels) were called “the sons of God.” This is because they were each created directly by God; they do not marry and raise children. So here in Genesis 6, Moses calls the descendants of Adam and Eve "the sons of God" because God created Adam and Eve directly.

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  13. Hi,

    (1) I'd like to see evidence Seth's line isn't the "sons of God." The drop in ages is an intervening punishment on God's part for the sin; it's not something that biologically happened on it's own due to intermarriage. Further, this drop in ages is to be referenced to Genesis 5 where it lists men living into hundreds of years.

    (2) I think race and spiritual devotion in this case were closely tied. It was through Seth's lineage that salvation would come, and Luke 3 even says Adam was the first "son of God" in terms of human lineage.
    If you're speaking of a pre-adam race, and yet to you "son of God" refers to immediate creation, then how can those two factors co-exist?

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  14. Hi Nick, Let me elaborate on some of the reasons why the sons of God are not the descendants of Seth: (1) The text sets the meaning of the word “sons” in two ways: (1) It places “the sons of God” in contrast to “the daughters of men.”

    The sons of God--------contrasted with--------the daughters of men

    It is plain that the word “daughters” in “the daughters of men” means physical daughters; therefore, it would be best to take the “sons of God” to mean sons of God in respect to their physical creation, rather than in respect to their religious allegiance. (2) You expressed that you do not believe that the context indicates that the change in life spans was due to the intermarriages. But it is right in the center of the discussion of the mixed marriages. It must have been the result of these mixed marriages. In verses 1-2 the marriages occur; in verse 3 the change in life spans is recorded; and we are told how the offspring of these marriages became great well known figures. Maybe it would be helpful to take a look at these verses.

    Note that two things resulted: (1) the life spans became 120 years; and (2) these offspring of these mixed marriages became great men. Looking further at the second result, we observe that the second result was a positive result. Observe that even after the appearance of giants on the earth these offspring still became the most renown: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown (Gen. 6:4, NASB). In the Hebrew language, “those” was emphasized, indicating that you would have thought that the giants would have been the most powerful people, but these offspring outdid them. The giants were not the outcome of the mixed marriages. (I changed my mind on this since I wrote my book.) Now let us take a look at verse 3: “Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” Two groups intermarried: “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men” (Heb. “the man).” The text says that God’s Spirit will not strive forever with man (Heb. “the man”) and that his days would be 120 years. So it was the man’s life span that was changed. We can tell it was changed for the better; that is, it was made longer because this result of the intermarriages was followed with the positive result listed in verse 4—their offspring became men of renown. In verse 3, God lets them know that, even though He is going to bless them with an increase in average life span, He is not happy with their sin. There is no mention of God’s anger until verse 5. God meant for them to be thankful after the intermarriages, but instead they sinned more than ever.
    (Please continue to my next comment.)

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  15. (Continued from my last comment.)

    To summarize, the providence of God brought the descendants in contact with the pre-Adamites of Genesis 1 and they intermarried. Four results occurred after these intermarriages took place: the average life span of the pre-Adamites was doubled, and the offspring from these marriages became politically powerful. The people became more sinful instead of more thankful to God. And God decided to judge these members of this mixed race, who lived upon the land, with Noah’s flood. These sons of God must carry a slightly different genetic makeup or else the average life span of either group would not have changed. Therefore, the sons of God must be the descendants of Adam and Eve, but “the daughters of men” must be members of a pre-Adamic race. This race was the subject of the creation story found in Genesis 1.

    You referred to the life spans that are listed in chapter 5; this list resumes in Genesis 11. In my book, I show mathematically that the values of these life spans and the curve showing their progressive fall gives strong evidence that these descendants of Adam and Eve married into an existing race that had a life span of approximately 60 years.

    I think you understand how I view the Bible’s teaching on the origins of the two races. The people that God created in Genesis 1 were created through evolution because Moses says that they are “the generations of the heavens and the earth.” “Generations” would better have been translated “descendants.” You can check out this point in my book. The Bible calls the people who were already dwelling upon the “land” the sons of God. They were the race who came directly from God’s special creation of Adam and Eve (directly from His hand).

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  16. Hi,

    (1) I can see your point in the contrast of 'sons of God' and 'daughters of men', but those can be considered idioms as well. Further, that argument doesn't necessitate another pre-adamic race.

    (2) I do believe the drop in lifespan was due to the (sinful) intermarriages, but that's because it was a punishment for doing so.

    (3) I would not say the result of the offspring was 'positive'. These "famous men" were such in the eyes of men only, not before God (hence the introduction of Noah in the next verse).

    (4) I think your interpretation of v4 is interesting and plausible in some ways, but I don't see how it connects to your grand point.

    (5) How is the 120 years an "improvement" when the godly figures of Gen 5 lived hundreds of years? I'd almost wonder now if the 'men of renown' were the folks in Gen 5.

    (6) How do you know who's lifespan was "doubled"? This seems like speculation. As I keep reading your second part, I'd say this is a lot of speculating. My theory fits simply taken what the text speaks on as well as the immediate context of Gen 5.

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  17. Hi Nick,

    To answer your comments in order:

    1. “The daughters of men” cannot be an idiom because the text says: “and daughters were born to them” (Gen. 6:1). [1] This sets the stage and puts the pressure on us to view “the sons of God” as a live metaphor, i.e., not an idiom.
    2. The Bible never says, or intimates that these marriages were “sinful.” The flood was mainly the result of general sinfulness, and, in particular, it was due to their violent acts: “…The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them” (Gen. 6:13).
    3. To have your life span increased is to be physically stronger, more enduring—a positive; to have your life span decreased is to be physically weaker—a negative. To become the leader of men requires strength—a positive. For the author of Genesis to say that these offspring from these intermarriages lost life spans and then to say that they became great leaders would have been like subtracting 1 and the adding 1; the result would have been nothing:

    -1 + 1 = 0

    4. Because many people believe that the giants mentioned in verse 4 were the offspring from these mixed marriages, I wanted to point out that a careful reading of the text indicates that this is not so. If this were so, it might be concluded that these marriages were unnatural marriages and therefore sinful. But these giants were the result of other marriages. Tradition says they resulted form the angels’ unions with mankind.
    5. Science tells us that the prehistoric people did not live as long as we do today. The Bible speaks of seventy years as normal. The average of the normal descendant of Adam and Eve was about 930 years. If these descendants of Adam and Eve married into a race that had an average life span of 60 years, their children would most likely be the average of these two values, since our life spans are determined by over seven thousand genes. Please see my article “Have You Answered the Question of Human Origins?” If you consider what would happen if two groups with these life spans slowly intermarried, you may conclude, as I have, that their average life span would level out at an average life span of 120 years. My book deals more with this probability. This is no doubt why the Lord scattered the descendants of Noah from the Tower of Babel. Otherwise, today we would have an average life span of 120 years.
    6. (See No. 5 above.)
    ___________________
    [1] Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 9172, 1973, 1975, 1977, by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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I welcome your comments. Feel free. However, I have set this blog so that I may see comments before I appprove them for publication.