Peter,
Proposing the existence of pre-Adamites solves a number of problems, but
it seems to me that it also creates some. One is reconciling it with I
Cor. 15:45. Another is having to believe that God waited thousands of
generations before producing a man who began life in an unfallen state.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Mon, 19 Mar 2001 pruest@pop.dplanet.ch wrote:
> You can have Jesus' genealogy go through Adam in a biological sense even
> if there were 10,000 pre-Adamites living at the time of Adam. But
> presumably you were thinking that all fallen humans (and this includes
> all humans except Jesus) must have their biological genealogy go through
> Adam. But the Bible does not imply the doctrin of the biological
> inheritance of the so-called "original sin" (supposedly Adam's). Romans
> 5:12ff contrasts Adam the head of the fallen humanity with Jesus Christ
> the head of the new, spiritual humanity. In both cases, it is definitely
> not biological inheritance that is in view. All believers, including
> Abraham and many other Old Testament believers, belong to the new
> humanity - but none of them descends from Jesus biologically; similarly,
> all humans before, contemporaneous with, and after Adam belong to fallen
> humanity, because "all have sinned", not because some of them
> biologically descend from Adam. The text emphasizes the correspondence
> between the old humanity and the new humanity, implying that the
> relationship of fallen humanity to Adam is taken in the same spiritual,
> not biological way as that of the new humanity to Jesus. The
> significance of Jesus' genealogy is also (partly) biological, but its
> primary impact is spiritual: it shows the fulfillment of prophecies
> given to Adam, Abraham, and David, and Jesus' right to the throne of
> David and his being the Messiah. Else why would the genealogy in Matthew
> 1 go through Joseph (who was not Jesus' father in a biological, but in a
> legal sense)?
>
>
> What does Genesis 3:20 imply? Jesus is the representative of the new
> humanity (both before and after his time). Adam is the representative of
> the old, fallen humanity (both before and after his time). Abraham is
> the father of all genuine believers (Gen.12:2-3; Rom.4:16), both
> Israelites and gentiles (gentiles presumably both before and after his
> time). Could Eve be the "mother of all living" in a similarly spiritual
> sense (both before and after her time)? Probably, it should be related
> to God's "proto-gospel" in Genesis 3:15, predicting that one of Eve's
> descendants will be the Messiah, through whom all will live who believe
> in him, without any consideration of inheritance.
>
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