The Lost World of Adam and Eve (22 page)

The intention of the covenant was that all the world would be blessed through Abraham and his family (Gen 12:1-3). That blessing occurs in numerous ways, but, most importantly, it is through Abraham and his family that God reveals himself to the world and re-establishes relationship with people through the mechanism of sacred space. Genesis does not finish that story; it only gets it started.

In Exodus it seems that the covenant is in disarray; the people of Israel are not in their land but are enslaved in Egypt. God’s presence is nowhere to be seen. But as the book progresses, God’s presence becomes increasingly evident from its first manifestation in the burning bush through the plagues, the pillar of cloud/fire and the theophany on Mount Sinai. The climax is reached at the end of the book as God comes down to dwell in the tabernacle that the Israelites have constructed according to his instructions.

Once God has taken up his residence again on earth, we see the temple as parallel to Eden. This can be seen in the visual imagery of the tabernacle but also in what the tabernacle makes possible. The presence of God again becomes the center of order and the source of life as it had been in Eden. The law establishes order for the people, and keeping it brings life. Life is available in relationship with God and being in his presence, just as it was in Eden. Deuteronomy 30:15-20 elaborates on this point:

God’s initiative to restore sacred space, then, began with the covenant—a relationship that would lead to more significant levels of relationship across the span of time. In the covenant relationship, God began revealing himself to Abraham and his family. Then he adopted Israel (the nation that came from Abraham) to be his people, and he took up his residence among them. They are to preserve the sanctity of this newly established sacred space both in the way that they live (the law, maintaining order in society) and in their rituals (where purity of sacred space is preserved). So, God’s initiative provided for life and order in relationship with God through his abiding presence.

Unfortunately, however, the Israelites prove incapable of maintaining the law. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel then begin to warn them that God is going to leave (e.g., Jer 7; Ezek 10), eventually leading to God’s presence being compromised as the temple is destroyed and the exiled people lose the land. But these prophets also begin talking about a new covenant in which God will write his law on their hearts. In the ancient world, God writing on the entrails (usually in connection with divination) signified that he was revealing himself (Jer 31:31-33;
NIV
: “minds,” v. 33).
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This represents the same idea of Israel being a light to the nations in that they were intended to show the world what God was like.

As we know, the new covenant is accomplished through Jesus, but this is only one of the roles of Jesus relative to the unfolding plan of God’s presence being restored. We learn in John 1:14 that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.” This is the same language used with regard to the tabernacle. The incarnation thus plays a role in making God’s presence available in the midst of his people. In this way, Jesus replaces the temple.
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Jesus also brings reconciliation through his death (resolution of disorder) and thereby brings order and life by providing a mechanism for people to be in relationship with God.

When Jesus leaves, he tells the disciples that he will send a Comforter. At Pentecost, the elements of the Tower of Babel are revisited. God the Holy Spirit descends and takes up residence in a new sacred space—his people, who Paul later tells us are the temple (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19). Unlike the Tower of Babel, the disorder of languages is resolved when God descends in Acts 2, as everyone can understand in their own language (Acts 2:6). The new covenant therefore leads to further revelation, presence and relationship, both in the incarnation and in the church. These are initiatives of God through Christ. The church is testimony to God bringing order by resolving the disorder of sin. The church also represents order because it is the center of God’s presence in the world. The church has received life and is the center of order in the world.

The final stage of God’s plan is revealed in Revelation 21 in the presentation of new creation. Paul had already indicated that if anyone is in Christ, new creation has come (2 Cor 5:17). The full establishment of new creation, however, will have a higher level of order than that which characterized Eden, as well as a higher level of order than we now experience as his people.

The features of new creation are enumerated in Revelation 21:

• Revelation 21:1: no sea (recall that sea was the initial form that non-order took in Gen 1:2)
  
• Revelation 21:2: bride and groom (relationship formalized)
  
• Revelation 21:3: “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them . . . and be their God” (presence)
  
• Revelation 21:4: no more death or mourning or pain (non-order resolved)
  
• Revelation 21:5: “seated on the throne” (recall that “rest” = reign—the basis of order)
  
• Revelation 21:22: no temple because the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are its temple (The idea of temple was that it marked the center of sacred space and that radiating out from it were zones of diminishing sacredness. With God replacing the temple, we might infer that there is no diminishment—that there is no center because it is all center.)
  
• Revelation 21:27: purity and life
  

This entire sequence of God’s initiatives is focused on Jesus, the better Adam, who was able to attain that which Adam and Eve were unable to attain. Life and order are achieved through Christ. He fulfills the law (order founded on the presence of God); he fulfills the covenant (as the climax of God’s program of revelation and reconciliation); and he fulfills creation (as he takes his place as the center of order and the source of life).

In this interpretation, the relationship between Adam and Jesus can be seen in stronger ways. Both are archetypal representatives and have a priestly role. Both are connected to the issues of life/death and order/disorder. These issues will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. In a final note, we can see that all of Paul’s treatment of Adam pertains to the issues of sin, death and the theological archetypal roles of both Adam and Jesus. His patently theological comments do not address the issues of science (e.g., whether Adam was the first human or the only human at his time).
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This will be discussed more fully in chapters twenty and twenty-one.

Proposition 19

Paul’s Use of Adam Is More Interested in the Effect of Sin on the Cosmos Than in the Effect of Sin on Humanity and Has Nothing to Say About Human Origins

Including an Excursus on Paul’s Use of Adam by N. T. Wright

As we move more deeply into the relevant New Testament material, we continue our search for what the Bible, and Paul in particular, claims. We should not be distracted by the questions that emerge from our theological and scientific vantage point:

• Does Paul believe in a historical Adam?
  
• Is a historical Adam essential for a sound theological understanding of the fall and the need for salvation?
  
• What does Paul have to say about our discussions of human origins?
  
• How do Paul’s statements support our traditional view of original sin?
  
• How did we all come to be sinners?
  

The modern questions and traditional readings can easily lead us off track if they are not focused on the actual case that Paul is building. It is important for us to set aside our modern questions and traditional interpretations and focus on what Paul is doing as he makes his points. For this we need the expertise of a New Testament scholar, and N. T. Wright has graciously agreed to handle this undertaking. In the following excursus he develops two important ideas:

• Paul’s treatment of Adam has more to do with the kingdom of God in general, the whole creation project, than with salvation from sins.
  
• For Paul the parallels between the vocations (one might say functions) of Adam and Israel are more important than questions of human origins or the origin and transmission of sin.
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As a result, the fallen state of the cosmos redressed through Christ is the larger focus. The world can only be put right when people are put right. When people are saved by Christ, the entire creation project can get back on track. Read in this light, Paul has nothing to say about material human origins.

Excursus on Paul’s Use of Adam

N. T. Wright, St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews

Ever since the scientific revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christians have been in danger of focusing on the
existence
of Adam rather than the
vocation
of Adam. What’s more, ever since the battle between Augustine and the Pelagians, we have tended to focus on questions of what we have called “original sin”—questions about how Adam’s sin is somehow passed on to all his descendants—rather than on the role played by Adam’s sin in the larger narrative of God and the world, and, within that, of God and Israel. This short excursus cannot be seen as even a full statement of preliminary considerations. It is only some initial reflections. But I hope it will be a pointer to some helpful further possibilities.

It is worth noting, at the start, that after the early chapters of Genesis Adam is hardly mentioned in the Old Testament. It is thus not so surprising that Adam is not a major topic of discussion in the postbiblical Second Temple texts, either. When Adam is mentioned in these later works, it is frequently in connection not with his sin and its effects but with the glorious dominion he was originally given over the world, and with the way in which that might be reclaimed. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Pesher on Psalm 37
(4QpPs37), speaks of “the penitents of the desert [i.e., the Qumran sect itself] to whom all the glory of Adam shall belong, and to their descendants forever.” This looks back not only to Genesis 1 and 2 but to Psalm 8, which echoes the creation story and speaks of God crowning his human creatures with “glory and honor” by “put[ting] everything under their feet” (Ps 8:5-6).

Where we do find mention of the sin of Adam is in two books written around the end of the first century
A.D
. These books are known as
4 Ezra
and
2 Baruch
(
4 Ezra
comprises most of the book called 2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), and they are struggling to make sense of the horrible events of
A.D
. 70, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. The writers are driven right back to the beginning since the only way they can make sense of the appalling national tragedy is to say that the whole human race, Israel included, has somehow been corrupted by a fatal disease from the very start. This, I think, may help us understand why Paul comes to a similar conclusion, in Romans in particular. He didn’t start with a Jewish theory of “the fall of Adam,” because such a theory did not exist. His reflections are prompted by a different apparent tragedy, but one that then turned to triumph: the crucifixion of Israel’s Messiah and his resurrection from the dead. The problems of which Saul of Tarsus was aware in his early life—the problems, political and theological, caused by Roman oppression and by Jewish failure to keep Torah properly—were revealed, by the Messiah’s cross, to be much deeper than he had imagined. If a crucified Messiah was the divine answer to the problem, the problem must have been far worse than he had thought.

But Paul is then able to develop the other “side” of the Adamic picture. Drawing (like some Jewish contemporaries) on Psalm 8, he sees the glory that the Creator intended to give to his human creatures—their dominion over the world—as being already fulfilled in Jesus, and now, remarkably, to be shared with those who are “in the Messiah.” Both halves of this picture are important in Romans, where Adam is mentioned explicitly in Romans 5 but alluded to in various other places as well. Adam has been detected by many scholars, hiding under the argument of Romans 1:18-25 and Romans 7:7-12; the “old human being”(author’s translation) of Romans 6:6 is almost certainly alluding back to the Adamic solidarity that has been expounded in Romans 5. And the human glory of which Paul speaks in Romans 8:17-30 seems to be an exploration of the “glory” of Psalm 8:5: when humans are glorified, creation itself will at last be brought back into proper order.

It is important to be clear about this wider context because the question generated by the scientific study of cosmic and human origins (“did Adam exist?” or “was there an original Adam?”) has become muddled up with a
soteriological
question, as to whether an “original Adam” is necessary for a biblical doctrine of salvation. But this would-be biblical doctrine has often been presented in a shrunken and distorted way. It has often been supposed to work like this: (a) God demanded perfect obedience from Adam and Eve; (b) they broke his command; (c) Jesus has given God perfect obedience; (d) he therefore possesses a “righteousness” that is available to believers. There is no space here to explain why this is an inadequate and misleading version of what Paul says. What is more important for our present brief purposes is to note the very different (and deeply biblical) story about Adam that Paul tells. As in Genesis, where the new start in Genesis 12 represents the divine answer to the problem of Genesis 3–11, in Paul’s exposition the divine answer to the problem of Adam (here at Rom 1:18–3:20) is the call of Abraham and the establishing of the covenant with him (here at Rom 4). For Paul, what God has done in and through Jesus the Messiah and his faithful death is to be true to the covenant with Abraham,
and therefore to deal with the sin of Adam and its effects.
That is what Paul then sums up in Romans 5:12-21, and explains and expands more fully in Romans 6–8.