Re: How to interpret Adam (was: Re: Kerkut)

George wrote:

>Dick Fischer wrote:
>
> > A "picture of" Adam? No real Adam though? I frankly don't know how a
> > parallel can be drawn between a non-existent figurehead and a flesh and
> > blood Christ. The first Adam was non-existent, the other really was? Then
> > how does this work: 1Cor 15:45: "And so it is written, The first man Adam
> > was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
>
> Please stop trying to make me say things that I didn't say. I
> think that
>there's very little doubt that St. Paul understood Gen.2-3 as an account
>of an
>historical figure Adam & used that idea to express a belief in the causal
>effects of
>the the sin of humanity in its origin & the general sinful condition of
>humanity.

Okay, St. Paul and I agree. But then, neither he nor I have a Phd in
theology, so what do we know?

>In a similar way, the author/editor of Gen.1 thought that there were
>waters above the
>heavens and used that idea in expressing the belief that God is the
>creator of the
>entire universe.

Well, which is it? Is it water, or is it solid? I have heard both on this
list.

> The fact that there isn't a super-celestial ocean doesn't make Gen.1
>worthless as a theological statement about creation, & the fact that there
>probably wasn't a single human from whom the whole human race sprung
>doesn't invalidate
>what Paul says about the problem of sin.

There probably was a single human in Africa, or at least a small group of
related individuals from whom the human race sprung. But I don't believe
Paul was talking about him (or them). I believe Paul was talking about the
one from whom the Jewish race derived, the first of the covenant. How
would Paul know where the first humans came from? We don't even know that
today.

>& please don't keep pretending that this amounts to a claim that there was no
>real origin of the human race at all. To say that the 1st humans - in a
>theological
>sense - were a group of a few hundred rather a single Adam-Eve pair
>doesn't mean that
>Christ, & the rest of us, trace our ancestry back to pure fiction.

I don't think I said that or implied that. We both agree that the human
race originated. But if Adam originated at the junction of the Tigris and
Euphrates as described in Genesis, and the earliest trace of civilization
there dates to no earlier than 4800 BC, then that establishes one
independent data point as to the probable time of Adam. If you run the
genealogies back to Adam then that is a likely time frame. If a real live
Adam spoiled my theology, then I would rethink my theology. But that's
just me.

> > > & 2d, how did the action of Adam, in
> > >your scenario, bring about the condemnation of his Mesoamerican
> > >contemporaries?
> >
> > I don't know if it did. I don't know how the nearby Sumerians were
> > affected. Simply an opportunity lost I suppose.
>
>My point was simply that your Adam-Hitler parallel doesn't work very well.

My only reason for using that analogy is that we don't need to be directly
related to someone to be impacted by the sin of someone. I don't think
there is a genetic coding for sin in our DNA. We have free will, that
allows us to make wrong choices, and the choices we make that are
displeasing to God, we call sin. Adam brought accountability into the
picture where humans had not been accountable before, and messed it
up. Simple.

Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Sat Mar 6 12:58:03 2004