CHAPTER III

ADAM AND THE RACE

THE historical origin and transmission of sin is touched upon by Paul in what he says of the relation of Adam to the race. It is evident that the apostle read the story of the first man and his fall in Genesis as literal history. He also shared the view which was current in his time, that the sinfulness of mankind in general had its origin. in the transgression of Adam. Physical death was viewed as the consequence of sin. Such are the presuppositions of Paul's references to the hereditary aspect of sin and death.1 Two passages are of special importance in this connection: 1 Cor. xv. 45-49 (cf. v. 22) and Rom. v. 12-21.

In the first of these passages the apostle is contrasting Adam and Christ as the head of natural and of spiritual humanity respectively. He is illustrating the saying of verse 22: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." He accordingly describes Adam's nature. He is" of the earth, earthy," and hence all men as natural descendants of Adam are, like him, subject to mortal [frailty. Nothing is here said of Adam's sin; the whole passage is a description of him as a natural man, a child of earth, and therefore liable to death. But does the apostle then mean to imply that Adam was by his very nature mortal; that all die in him because he was himself, even apart from sin, a perishable creature? This conclusion would not agree with Rom. v. 12 sq., where death is certainly contemplated as the consequence of sin. Nor does the apostle in teaching that Adam was "natural," 1 Cf. The Pauline Theology, pp. 125, 126.

while Christ is "spiritual," mean to imply that Adam had no spiritual nature. He is contemplating Adam in a certain aspect of his being as contrasted with Christ. Adam was a creature liable to death, and his descendants share that liability. Christ is a life-giving spirit, and those who are joined to him constitute a spiritual humanity over which death can have no power. Paul's idea must have been that which underlies the Old Testament representations, that man's primitive condition was that of weakness and indeterminateness; that he was, so to speak, a candidate for immortality. He was by nature a creature, but he might by obedience attain immortality. When he sinned, this possibility was forfeited and he became actually subject to death. The two goals, life and death, were conceived as set before him. Which goal he should attain would hinge upon his obedience or disobedience to God. These also were presuppositions with Paul, derived from the Old Testament and from the popular Jewish theology.

The modern mind inevitably asks how far these ideas of the apostle accord with critical theories of the ancient traditions embodied in the early chapters of Genesis and with current views of the history of mankind. In order to make any such comparison at all, we must translate Paul's terms into their modern equivalents. We must no longer regard the description of the first human pair, their temptation and fall, as history, but as a legendary rendering of man's moral experience, coming down in its substance from a remote antiquity, and at length taking form, in accordance with the genius of Israel's religion, in the present book of Genesis. When this is done such points as the following present themselves to our notice: (1) Adam, the symbol of primitive man, is not regarded as perfect, but only as innocent and undeveloped. He is conceived of as a weak and earthly creature, an äveρwπоs Xoikós in whom the lower nature predominates, a “living soul" (vxý Sŵoa) with animal appetites and passions, but capable also of choice and action and of developing a positive moral character. Primitive man is morally neu

[tral, as yet non-moral, though endowed with capacities and powers which make possible to him a moral career, either of obedience or of disobedience to God.

(2) Physiology regards death as the law to which all organisms are subject by their very nature. What standing ground can then be left for the view of Paul, that physical death is the consequence of sin? There is a measure of inconsistency here, though not of the sort which is sometimes asserted. Jewish religious thought, in which Paul's view was rooted, could not look at death from the standpoint of natural science. Death was viewed not as a law of all created organisms, but in its ethical aspects. That which constituted the essence of death to the Hebrew mind was not physical dissolution, but the weakness, sickness, and sorrow which are its accompaniments here and, especially, the dread of the dark underworld, the land of shadows and forgetfulness, into which death ushers the soul. The word "death" had widely different associations for the Hebrew mind from what it has for the physiologist. The word "life" has equally different meanings. Paul could say that Christ has "abolished death" (2 Tim. i. 10), although he knew perfectly well that physical dissolution is the lot of all bodily organisms. For the Christian death has been transformed by redemption into departure to be with Christ (Phil. i. 23). All (things are his who belongs to Christ, including life and death (1 Cor. iii. 22), because Christ has made death the gateway into his eternal joy. As a mere physiological fact the fact of physical dissolution-death remains what it was before. But by a Jewish mind death is not regarded as a mere physiological phenomenon. When Paul says that death entered the world and has continued to hold sway over mankind in consequence of sin, we should not, in order to resolve the difficulty in question, jump to the conclusion, as many expositors have done, that moral and not physical death is meant. We should rather remember what "death" connotes to the Jewish mind, which does not separate the physical from the moral after the manner of natural science, but finds the primary

significance of the fact of death in its ethical aspects. It is sometimes said: On Paul's principles we should be required to suppose that, had sin never entered the world, all the human beings who ever lived would still be living on earth. The objection only shows how the real import of Paul's doctrine may be missed by making physical death mean in Paul just what it means in biology. Paul's thought would lead to the idea that, had there been no sin, death, with its accompaniments of sorrow, pain, and fear, would not have been. But some other transition or cessation of earthly existence (which would be death in the sense of biology) would not thereby be excluded. I am not contending that the Jewish view of death which Paul shared is wholly warranted from a scientific point of [view, but only that the subject was regarded by Paul from quite a different standpoint from that of physical science. Practically, the religious motive of Paul's doctrine was that the "sting of death is sin" (1 Cor. xv. 56). It is sin which makes death terrible. Redemption robs it of (its terrors. Theoretically, Paul held something more than this. But what was more than this was incidental to his thought in consequence of his Jewish training, and was not essential to his view of religion.

(3) With Paul sin is an affair of the will. It entered the world by man's choice. Whatever may have been. man's native weakness, whatever his liability to temptation in consequence of animal appetites, sin itself is a perversion of the will. It is therefore alien to man's nature. It is a false direction and wrong use of his powers, a missing of his true goal. It is not inherent in his sensuous nature or in his imperfection as a creature, but in his choices and character. Hence, man is responsible for his sin and guilty in consequence of it. It brings him under the holy displeasure of God (Rom. i. 18). Various as are the degrees of light which different men enjoy, all have light enough to render them inexcusable for their sin (Rom. i. 20; ii. 1).

(4) Sin is universal. "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. iii. 23). The argument of

the Epistle to the Romans is based upon the fact that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are sinners. As such they are guilty before God and can be saved only by grace.

We note in Paul two classes of references to the subject of sin. One set of passages speaks of sinful choices and actions, παραβάσεις, παραπτώματα (Rom. ii. 23; iv. 15 ; v. 14 et al.); the other, of sin in general as a world-ruling power, ȧuaρría (Rom. iii. 9, v. 12, 13 et al.). Ménégoz distinguishes these two ideas by calling the former Paul's moral notion, the latter his dogmatic notion, of sin. "The moral notion," he says, "considers sin in itself, in its nature, in its essence. The dogmatic notion considers it in its origin, its extent, its rôle, its end."1 Paul speaks, on the one hand, of concrete sin; on the other, of sin in the abstract. In modern parlance we should make the distinction by speaking of sinful acts and of a sinful character out of which sinful acts spring. The peculiarity of Paul's thought is that he personifies sin, in this latter sense, and speaks of it as entering the world and ruling (mankind. But this use of language need cause no confusion. By sin, in this personified sense, he means human sinfulness collectively considered the power of a universal sinful bias.

It is in connection with this idea of sin that Paul draws the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. v. 12-21). The aim of that passage is to magnify the grace of God in redemption. This the apostle does by showing that the divine mercy which has been manifested in Christ is more than a match for the power of sin, mighty as that power is. As the apostle touches successively upon the points of comparison, he emphasizes the superior greatness of God's grace, as compared with sin, by exclaiming : “Much more" (oλ pâλλov) does the grace of God surpass the power of sin. Incidentally, however, Paul has here given us the nearest approach to a theory of "original sin." The passage proceeds upon the view that Adam was the natural head of the race, as Christ is its spiritual head. Sin began in Adam's transgression; and since death was to be the 1 Le Péché et la Rédemption, p. 15.