Gordon,
gordon brown wrote:
>
> 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.
I Cor. 15:45 compares the "first man Adam" with the "last Adam" who is
Jesus Christ (Adam means "man"), and verse 47 compares the "first man"
Adam with the "second man" Jesus Christ. Whereas Adam is the "first
man", Jesus is both the "second man" and the "last Adam". As both before
and after Jesus there were many other people, this implies that Paul
talks neither about Jesus as the biologically second and last man, nor
about Adam as the biologically first man.
The context deals with spiritual realities, like in Romans 5:12-21. So,
the "first man Adam" was the head of fallen humanity both before,
during, and after his time, while Jesus is the head of spiritually
living humanity both before, during, and after his stay on Earth. If it
had been in a biological sense that, in I Cor. 15, Adam was called the
"first man", the second human being would be Eve, and the second man
Cain, not Jesus.
> Another is having to believe that God waited thousands of
> generations before producing a man who began life in an unfallen state.
Before trying to deal with this problem, it might be helpful to look a
little more closely at Adam's situation. Before the advent of man, the
creation had been in a fallen state for a long time already, perhaps
billions of years, presumably since the fall of Satan. This is what Paul
describes in Romans 8:19-23. The creation is "subjected to futility" and
"groaning" through "the one who subjected it" - who certainly was not
Adam, but either God, or Satan with God's permission.
Adam was the first elected human being, elected for the purpose of
establishing God's kingdom within a fallen creation. God's "forming" a
person (Adam in Genesis 2:7, Hebrew: "yatzar") usually means forming
someone in his mother's womb, and this occurs for a specific mission, as
can be seen in other passages using "yatzar" (Jeremiah 1:5; Isaiah 43:7,
21; Isaiah 49:5; Psalm 139:13, 16). God also (perhaps 20 to 30 years
later) breathed into Adam the "spirit-of-understanding of life" (Hebrew:
"neshamah ghayyim"), usually translated as "breath of life" (Gen.2:7;
for "neshamah", "spirit of understanding" cf. Job 32:8; Prov. 20:27; Job
33:4; this is not the usual word for "spirit", which would be "rooagh").
In this way, God lifted Adam's life from the purely natural level into
the new dimension of the spiritual life - similar to what happens today
to those who are born again. That by this means Adam became a "living
soul" is not equivalent to saying that he became alive biologically, as
neither the animals (Gen.1:21) nor Adam (Gen.2:7) were made without
living precursors, but by means of natural descent. That at this point
of God's dealing with them, both animals and Adam are called "living
souls" indicates that then they became what God intended them to be: in
the case of animals, biological bodies gifted with the newly created
soulish dimension, but in the case of Adam, a body-soul gifted with the
new spiritual life. Humans created "in the image of God" are capable of
becoming spiritually alive, but they do not necessarily realize this
potentiality.
God then made Adam to settle in the garden in Eden, in order to "work it
and keep it" (Gen.2:15); "keep" is not just "take care of": the Hebrew
"shamar" means "to guard" and implies a danger against which the garden
was to be guarded. The word used for "garden" (Hebrew: gan) implies a
protective fence around this "paradise". The "tree of the knowledge of
good and evil" (Gen.2:9, 17) in it would be incomprehensible if there
were no evil at that time. With Eve, the Lord prepared a "helper" for
Adam (Gen.2:18). The Hebrew for "helper" is "ngehzer", which usually
refers to a help in a military or law conflict. That she should be
"suitable for him" or "fit for him" does not talk of menial, subordinate
tasks, but tells us that she should be capable of fighting as an equal
at his side. All this suggests that the outside environment was not that
peaceful.
By his disobedience, Adam ruined the possibility of his fulfilling God's
mandate for the world. From then on, God proclaimed the coming of the
Messiah who is to set the creation "free from its bondage to decay and
obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom.8:21). In a
sense, before his disobedience, Adam was a type prefiguring Christ. In
God's history with mankind, it is often the case that the first one
fails, while the second one is useful for God: Adam - Christ, Cain -
Abel, Ishmael - Isaac, Esau - Jacob (Israel), Ruben - Joseph, Manasseh -
Ephraim, Saul - David.
Sin's severity depends on the level of revelation: "sin indeed was in
the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there
is no law" (Romans 5:13). Paul applies this to the time from Adam to
Moses. But even during that period, there were divine precepts and
orders and corresponding human responsibilities, but before Adam even
these were not yet applicable. In a sense, the pre-Adamites may be
compared to those modern people who never heard either the Gospel or
anything else from the Bible. In principle, they are capable of entering
into a personal relationship with God, being created in God's image, but
they are prevented from doing so, in a full sense, by their lack of
knowledge. Could it be that Adam did not begin life in an unfallen
state, but would have been born again in his experience told in Genesis
2:7 and could then have begun his new life in happy fellowship with the
Lord he had not known personally before?
Before God called him out, Adam was fallen and sinful in the limited
degree and with the limited responsibility (Romans 5:13) applicable to
the pre-Adamites who had never heard God's message. As one who did not
get any clear christian teaching before the age of 21, I have no
problems conceiving of such a possibility of sinfulness in honest
ignorance. By his wilful and knowing disobedience (as opposed to Eve's
being seduced somewhat unawares), Adam invited severe punishment, with
the loss of his special commission and (before the end time) of the
opportunity of eternal life (Gen. 3:22-24). But God lovingly restored
them (Gen. 3:21), presumably on the basis of the coming atonement
through the Messiah and their belief in him (Gen. 3:20 and 4:1).
So, why did God wait for thousands of human generations before calling
Adam?
Why did he wait for 10 billion years before making an Earth? Why did he
wait for another 4.5 billion years before making humans? Then comes the
question of the delay before calling Adam. Why did he then again wait
for many generations before calling Abraham to prepare a special people
out of whom the promised Messiah should come? Why did he wait for
another 2000 years before sending his Son? Why has he since been waiting
for another 2000 years before bringing the Gospel to many indigenous
peoples all over the world?
We have quite a good answer to the first two questions. Preparing a
universe and preparing a planet suitable for human life takes much time
if it should be done by means of natural processes - evidently God's
preferred mode of action in such circumstances. As both science and
Genesis 1 apparently indicate, God prepared the first humans by means of
a long evolutionary process out of animals he called "living souls",
before he created a spiritual dimension in them.
We have a partial answer to the last question in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord
is not slow about his promise..., but is forbearing toward you, not
wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance".
God wants to give all people an opportunity to be saved. But he prefers
to work through his people who are already saved. And we are often slack
to get this job done...
As to the pre-Adamites, we don't know how God dealt with them. Perhaps
he prepared and educated them in some ways, until humanity was ready for
the next step, through Adam. Quite generally, a newly created object or
creature is like a seed requiring a further development, sometimes a
long one: a new human being, after having been created by God in his/her
mother's womb, is not at all finished, but takes months to be ready for
birth, years to become a grown-up person, and sometimes decades to
become useful for God. Newly created humans, as a species, may have
needed a development through thousands of generations before one of them
would be ready to take on the mandate of proclaiming God's kingdom.
Peter Ruest
CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern
Switzerland
>
> 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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