1 Corinthians 15:20–50: Adam Is Dead
Years ago the God-Is-Dead Movement began. This theological position did not argue that God had died; it was more the idea that man had created God (or gods) in the past, and now we had become intelligent and sophisticated enough that we no longer need a god. Similarly, and sadly, for some segments of Evangelicalism, science has left us with an Adam who is merely a convenient religious symbol of God as Creator. Science has convinced many that we no longer need Adam.
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul lays out the doctrine of the resurrection, using Adam in verses 20–26 and again in verses 45–-50 as part of his theological foundation. This article is not going to examine Paul’s arguments for the resurrection, but it will examine the theology that formed the foundation for his arguments.
In our churches, colleges, and seminaries we routinely teach theology like a collection of bread sticks—the doctrine of Christ lies next to the doctrine of the Bible which lies across the basket from the doctrine of sin; we take one doctrine out of the basket to examine it, study it, taste it, and the rest remain undisturbed. We understand the reason for so doing: because our finite minds can grasp only so much at one time, we tend to separate theology into its constituent elements and focus on them one at a time. That is not how the Bible presents theology, however. A bowl of spaghetti would better illustrate the biblical approach. The Bible weaves its truths through the pages of Scripture and intertwines them so much that you cannot move one strand of spaghetti without affecting numerous others. This article argues, therefore, that one cannot remove the literal Adam from Scripture without affecting other doctrines. Paul clearly demonstrates this truth in 1 Corinthians 15.
Doctrines of Inspiration and Man
One theological foundation to Paul’s view of the resurrection is the doctrine of inspiration. In verse 45 Paul uses the word gegraptai, “it is written” or “it has been written and remains so to the present.” He refers to the end of Genesis 2:7: “And man became a living soul.” Paul is not quoting directly, for he adds the “first” to distinguish the first Adam from Christ, the “second Adam.” Paul uses “it is written” over thirty times in his epistles. Each time he uses the word to initiate, support, defend, or expand an argument that he is making. In each case he assumes the truth of what he is quoting. The truth of a literal Adam, described in the opening chapters of Genesis, provides the rationale for the necessity of the Second Adam, as is shown in the following theological points.
A second theological foundation to Paul’s view of the resurrection is the doctrine of man (verses 45–49). Paul repeats the term “earthy” (or “clayey”) to emphasize the terrestrial nature of humanity. It seems very unlikely that Moses or Paul was considering whether or not Captain Kirk would find any other humans in the universe; that is not the focus of this passage. Paul is arguing that all humans are in the image of the One who was formed from the earth. The word is used only here in the New Testament. It is a word that vividly expresses the earthliness of man’s nature. Because Adam is from the earth, his nature and activities are earthly. Even before the fall, man’s primary duties were physical—care for the garden, eat of the fruit of his labor, and populate the earth. Only after a day of physical labor did Adam and Eve spend time with their Lord.
In addition, Paul identifies five truths about Adam in this section of the passage. First, Adam, upon the joining of the breath of life and the body formed by God, became a living soul. This separates humanity from the animal world. Second, the natural Adam came before the spiritual Adam; the incarnation of Christ was some four thousand years after the creation of Adam and Eve. Third, the first Adam was from the dust; the Second Adam was from heaven. This distinguishes Christ from humanity. While He was truly human and his humanity came long after Adam, his origin was not ultimately Adamic. He was already existent before His incarnation. Fourth, while the natural man is like the earthly man, the regenerate man is like the heavenly, Jesus Christ. All humans in their natural state are terrestrial; all believers in their spiritual state are heavenly. Finally, all people bear the image of Adam, i.e., the sinfulness that all humans have received because of the fall.
The Doctrines of Sin and Salvation
Third, Paul’s view of a literal Adam was critical to his doctrine of sin (vv. 21, 22, 26, 49, 50). Paul argues that death came by Adam because sin came by Adam. Death is a result of sin. It appears that Adam was initially created as a mortal being. Immortality was promised if he would eat from the tree of life. Theologians routinely argue that Jesus’ human body was like Adam’s before the fall. Christ’s body was mortal. While no human could take His life, He could sacrifice His physical body; Jesus died. So Adam’s body was capable of both eternal life and death; it was his to choose which it would be. His lack of faith in and obedience to God’s commands resulted in sin, which then brought death. If Adam did not exist, then sin either entered into the world through some unmentioned mechanism or was part of the original order, a part of God’s evolutionary process. If so, then sin is natural, a normal part of the world. If that be true, then sin is not really sin; it is not an aberration of what ought to be. If there is no sin, however, then we must conclude that death is not the result of sin. If death is not the result of sin, then death, as well as sin, must be a normal part of the world as God created it. Instead, however, Paul argues that death is an enemy.
Millard Erickson is representative of those who argue for the truth of creation but also the truth of evolution. “Fundamentalism stresses that God is transcendent and works in a direct or discontinuous fashion [creation]. Liberalism, on the other hand, emphasizes that God is immanent, working through natural channels [evolution]. Each view regards the other as inappropriate. Since God is both transcendent and immanent, however, both emphases should be maintained, that is, to the extent they are taught in the Bible.”1 He proceeds to argue for long eons of evolutionary activity punctuated by God’s intervention along the lines of Genesis 1, creating certain kinds of life until ultimately creating Adam and Eve (what he calls “progressive creationism”). This approach maintains the historicity of Adam and the actuality of God’s specific creation of the human race. The problem with this approach, however, is that death must be seen as a normal part of this evolutionary process for the millions of years of life on earth prior to the fall of Adam.
Fourth, Paul’s view of a literal Adam was essential to his doctrine of salvation (vv. 22, 49–50). Do we need to be saved? If there is no sin and if death is a normal part of the world, then why be saved? Paul concluded that flesh and blood, the perishable physical bodies that people receive from Adam, cannot inherit the kingdom of God, which is imperishable. This is the culmination of Paul’s argument for the resurrection. God designed something greater than his creation of Adam—the resurrection of the bodies of every believer. Bodies inherited from Adam cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The final blessing of the gospel is the reception of a resurrected body.
Adam was essential to Paul’s theology of the resurrection, for the truth of Adam’s existence was a foundation of his doctrines of inspiration, man, sin, and salvation. Resurrection is the logical outworking of the preceding doctrines. According to the Scriptures (inspiration), a literal Adam (man) literally disobeyed God in the garden (sin) and brought about death. As a result, God in His graciousness provided a solution of the sin problem (salvation). Paul references Adam so frequently in this section of 1 Corinthians because he is foundational to the doctrine of the resurrection. If Bible-believers give up a literal Adam, they suffer theological loss. It will affect inspiration, anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, and even the doctrine of the resurrection. Theology is integrated; one doctrine cannot be separated from the rest. So when we look at the early chapters of Genesis, we need to remember that if we give up a literal Adam, if we allow some to declare that Adam Is Dead, we give up too much of Christianity.
Dr. Larry Oats is professor of Systematic Theology at Maranatha Baptist Seminary in Watertown, Wisconsin.
(Originally published in FrontLine • May/June 2016. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
- Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 443. [↩]