Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

Travis cited: "In Romans 5:18-19 Paul
writes:
"Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one
transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness
leading to life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the
one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man
many will be made righteous.""

I cannot accept as an interpretation of this text that Paul was mistaken
that Adam was an historical figure. How would the people he was writing
this letter interpret this? The point of this text is to contrast Adam the
ONE MAN through which condemnation came to all with Christ the ONE MAN
through which righteousness comes to all. ONE act of transgression,
compared to ONE act of righteousness. The people reading this epistle would
understand it as referring to Adam, the Adam of the Garden of Eden. To
make the claim that "well Paul just got it wrong" undermines the entire
message, maybe even the entire Gospel.

Certainly Paul did not understand that at the same time that Adam was making
this transgression there were other hominids scattered throughtout the
globe, and that Adam was the ancestor of thousands of years of hominid
evolution before him.

In my opinion, any consistent interpretation of this passage, and of Genesis
3, has to maintain an historical Adam that was the first to transgress.
This leaves us obvious problems with how this sin is transmitted "to all
men", it obviously is not a genetic transmission of Sin. John McIntrye
claims that it is the spread of the Law, and that humans are not sinners
until they become aware of the Law. I would suspect that this transmission
of Law/Sin/Guilt occurred during the time between Adam and Noah (much faster
than McIntrye claims).
Received on Mon Jun 12 07:34:49 2006