Interesting....considering nobody interprets it the way you do...all the other people have gross distortions?
You suggested that my view translates Genesis 3:20 as "only ... the mother of all saved" (
source). That is a gross distortion of my view, and made all the more egregious because you said it immediately after I explicitly stated how I translate and interpret it (
source).
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There was no one prior to Adam and Eve living on earth.
In your view, perhaps. But you asked a question about mine, so yours is not even relevant.
Nowhere does the Bible teach this.
You are simply repeating yourself. This was already addressed.
That has no bearing on a pre-Adamic population.
Correct. However, it does have bearing on the question of whether the Bible ever indicates something it does not explicitly teach. Another example: Anyone familiar with the doctrine of the Trinity knows that it does.
The simple example....Cain married one of his sisters..or another female from Adam and Eves progeny.
In your view, perhaps. And it's a position that shoulders you with the burden of proof, as I pointed out.
What you are doing is speculating.
Incorrect. I expressed a view that is "already consistent with the text as written," as I said. No speculation was required. The text explicitly says (and I take it at face value) that Cain found a wife in the land of Nod, so clearly there were people there—starting with her, obviously, and presumably she had parents.
Those who think Cain spent decades unmarried and childless are the ones speculating, since there is literally nothing in the text to suggest this—and the Hebrew verb tense which rules against that reading.
1 Corinthians 15:47 tells us "the first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man is of heaven."
Scripture describes Adam as the first man archetypally, not prototypically, for
the sense in which Adam was the first man needs to correspond with the sense in which Christ was the second man (1 Cor 15:47; cf. Rom 5:12-19, esp. 15). If Adam being the first man means there were no men previously, then Christ being the second man means there was no men between him and Adam—which is patently absurd, for countless people existed between the two.
So, the ordinals first and second here refer to Adam and Christ not as men,
per se, but as something else. I think a more credible and consistent interpretation is that
Paul is referring to them archetypally as federal heads in this covenant relationship between God and mankind. In this passage as well as Romans 5, Paul is describing how he perceives Christ in relation to Adam and vice-versa. In his apostolic teachings, those who are in Adam (by default) belong to the natural, earthly, old creation that experiences condemnation and death, while those in Christ (by grace) belong to the spiritual, heavenly, new creation that experiences salvation and life. These are forensic and existential realities of our covenant relationship with God. That means this is theological language, not scientific language.
When Paul uses the terms "in Adam" or "in Christ"—for example, "just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Cor 15:22)—he is referring to covenant union and federal headship. Just as we know countless people existed between the first man and second man, and plenty of Adams existed after the last Adam, so countless people could exist before the first man—because Paul was speaking theologically of the archetypal significance of Adam and Christ using covenantal language.
Eve, the mother of all, was taken from the first man.
That's one interpretation, yes.
DialecticSkeptic said:
CrowCross said:
That would mean those humans not of Adam and Eve's progeny would not need....life through Eve's seed.
Exactly how does that follow?
They didn't fall and would not Adams sin nature.
That only makes sense if sin is genetic—but is it?
I firmly believe that biblical and confessional orthodoxy requires a doctrine of original sin in order to explain sinful human nature. That is something I insist on maintaining, which of course this view does. It maintains that sin entered the world through Adam, from whom it was passed along to all mankind. Since that is not being denied, a question of curiosity, not concern, is raised: How is it passed along, if not through biological continuity?
I do not believe that sin is something we can identify and isolate biologically, as if there is something in the human genome to which we could point and say, "Here is the sin gene and the nucleotide sequence that codes for it." We can agree on that, right? And if sin is not a gene, then it's not a component of the reproductive cells (gametes) involved in procreation, something passed along through biological continuity.
Consequently, I don't think humans can be genetically modified to be sinless. Even a young-earth creationist should be able to agree with this. While scripture and Reformed confessional standards commit us to the belief that our sinful condition is a physical reality—we can see the effects of sin in the physical world, including our biology—they do not commit us to believing that there is something like a sin gene that we pass along biologically.
Remember, Adam and Eve were mortal but had access to eternal life through the tree of life (cf. Gen 3:22). Apart from God and exiled from the garden, human mortality runs unchecked. Immortality is a product of divine grace, not human nature; God alone possesses immortality (1 Tim 6:16), and life and immortality are brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim 1:10), that is, by access to the tree of life, the picture of Christ.
As I understand it, sin is passed along theologically (via covenantal solidarity), not biologically (via the gene pool), because sin pertains to the covenantal relationship between God and man. Your idea that those who aren't Adam's progeny would thereby not inherit original sin only makes sense if sin is genetic, something contained in the gametes, something passed along biologically, and I am not aware of any reason for thinking that it is. Both Adam's sin and Christ's righteousness are covenant realities of federal headship, and imputation refers to covenantal solidarity, not biological inheritance. We can find this point being expressed by Derek Kidner in his commentary on Genesis (emphasis mine):
Again, it may be significant that, with one possible exception, the unity of mankind “in Adam” and our common status as sinners through his offense are expressed in scripture in terms not of heredity but simply of solidarity. We nowhere find applied to us any argument from physical descent [expressed in such terms as found in Hebrews 7:9-10] … Rather, Adam's sin is shown to have implicated all men because he was the federal head of humanity ...
-- Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (InterVarsity Press, 1967), pg. 30.
So, yes, they fell—because their federal head, Adam, fell.
