I hope you don't mind my jumping in here and taking this from where my understanding lies.
I don’t mind at all.
Just as an aside: I can detect AI-generated content in your response. [1] Arguing with AI is okay—I get into it with ChatGPT a lot—but I would prefer that you indicate which content is yours.
Romans 5, in my reading of Scripture, does not portray Adam as a merely elected representative chosen from among pre-existing humans. Paul's reasoning demands a deeper, organic unity.
While we do find Paul speaking of Adam as a covenantal representative, both here and elsewhere, your inclusion of “merely” is curious. It suggests that Adam is not only a covenantal representative but also something else. What additional thing is required to make sense of the covenantal logic of Reformed theology? You seem to think the “sole progeniture” of Adam is needed, as if covenant theology “unravels” without that. But that simply does not follow. Let’s explore the weaknesses of the argument that the AI reasoning model produced. I will call him Airm.
The logic of Romans 5 requires Adam to be the headwaters
Airm tried to argue that the logic of Romans 5 “only holds if humanity flows from Adam as its source, the headwaters of the race.” But in my Reformed evolutionary creationism, Adam most certainly is the headwaters—covenantally and forensically. While his contemporaries were “independent of him” biologically, nobody is independent of him covenantally. He is the federal head and covenant representative of all humanity; like everyone else, his contemporaries were “in Adam” covenantally. So no, they cannot “remain innocent while Adam introduces sin.”
Airm is simply wrong. It is neither arbitrary nor unjust that Adam’s contemporaries share in guilt without an “organic” connection to him. It is not arbitrary because Adam’s federal headship is God’s sovereign, juridical appointment rooted in his eternal covenant of redemption, and it is not unjust because justice is constituted by God’s covenantal ordering of humanity. If God constitutes humanity under representative heads, either Adam or Christ, then covenantal imputation is an expression of justice, necessarily, not a violation of it.
Moreover, consider the other side of this covenantal coin, namely, Jesus Christ. Believers share in righteousness without any seminal connection to Christ—all of his contemporaries and everyone after were “independent of him” biologically—yet you wouldn’t call that arbitrary or unjust. If it is unjust for Adam’s sin to be imputed to those not connected to him biologically, it must be equally unjust for Christ’s righteousness to be imputed to those not connected to him biologically. Moreover, those condemned in Adam ratify his sin by their own actual sins, just as those justified in Christ ratify his righteousness by bearing fruit accordingly. The symmetry of biblical soteriology and imputation is crucial (v. 14). Paul explicitly yokes the two, so rejecting one shipwrecks the other.
Scripture never grants the premise that justice requires biological dependence. Judgment (v. 16), condemnation (v. 18), and constitution (v. 19, κατεστάθησαν) are acts of divine adjudication. The only relevant question in Pauline theology is, “Under what head does God reckon you?” Nobody is independent of either—covenantally and forensically.
“From one man” in Acts 17:26
Here, too, Airm is mistaken, an interpretive error stemming from a transmission error. He quotes Acts 17:26 as saying, “God made from one man every nation of mankind.”
This is another one of those obvious and compelling texts that I had to take seriously when developing my view. I learned from the historical-grammatical exegesis of this text that the word “man” (or sometimes “blood”)
does not exist in the earliest and best manuscripts. It is an interpolation, perhaps a marginal note that was later inserted into the text itself. So, I would want to emphasize, here, that it was the original texts that were inspired by God. By definition, interpolations are not original. I think my implication is clear.
Yes, God made of one every nation of men—but one what? I believe the surrounding context (vv. 24-29) provides that answer (cf. Mal 2:10), especially a historical understanding of the first-century Athenians and their religious ideas. (I highly recommend the
Expositor's Bible Commentary by W. R. Nicoll.) Against the Stoics and Epicurians (v. 18), Paul explained (a) that we are all of one God, not many gods, (b) that the visible world is not identical to God but is rather his purposeful creation, and (c) that God is personally and deeply invested in this world. This message would also constitute a subversive polemic against these Athenians who maintained a sharp, radical distinction between themselves and the outside barbaric world. No, said Paul, from one were all the nations of the earth made, one whose providential care "determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live," etc.
Having said that, I would also remind everyone of the work done by Swamidass who showed that, even if we would like Acts 17:26 to be a reference to Adam, it would not prove that he was the first human nor disprove billions of years of natural history. Why? Because, as can be argued biblically and demonstrated scientifically, we are all the genealogical progeny of Adam and Eve who lived 6,000 years ago—
even in light of evolution being true. Let that sink in.
Side note: Yes, the genealogies trace back to Adam as “the son of God” (Luke 3:38). But while tracing back to Adam supports that he existed, it does not support that he was the first human.
In the loins of his ancestor
The premier biblical analogy is Hebrews 7:9–10: Levi “paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor.” This is covenantal-seminal realism: Levi truly participated because seminally present in Abraham as progenitor—not mere appointee.
Appealing to Hebrews 7 to require “seminal presence” actually undermines covenant theology. Again, if representation requires biological participation, Christ cannot represent humanity—and the Adam–Christ parallel in Romans 5 falls apart. The appeal to “loins” replaces covenant with biology and ends up denying the very federal logic it is meant to defend.
And now for some miscellany
Historic Reformed theology affirms this [federal and natural union].
True. My view definitely is at odds with Reformed tradition.
However, it doesn’t follow that the federal union becomes ungrounded and arbitrary if you remove the natural/organic union.
If the population was sinful pre-Adam, Adam introduces nothing (Romans 5 collapses).
True. But humans were not sinful pre-Adam.
If innocent, guilt attaches without organic unity (unjust).
False, as I’ve shown. It cannot be unjust. Again, guilt attaches without organic union to Adam just as righteousness attaches without organic union to Christ. Imputation is covenantal, not biological.
If only descendants are guilty, universality fails.
True. But the premise is rejected: It is not just his descendants who are guilty.
Adam heads the old creation unto death; Christ, the last Adam, heads the new unto life (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:45).
True. But that doesn’t require natural/organic union; it requires covenantal union—which does not demand Adam as the first human. Existing outside Adam’s lineage does not fracture human unity anymore than existing outside Christ’s lineage.
[1] For example, “The logic is tight.” That is a known LLM meta-assessment trope. Humans typically demonstrate tight logic rather than declare it mid-argument, whereas AI frequently inserts these evaluative signposts to frame coherence. Another example: The trilemmas with parenthetical refutations is very characteristic of AI reasoning patterns.
