Being In Adam

[Note: I made some minor changes (links to cited Scripture and better explanation of the participation concept) the morning of 4.6.2014]




Several nights a week after dinner I lead my family through catechism practice.  We use the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and have been taking 1-2 weeks for each question.  This evening we started a new catechism question, question 16: 

Q. 16. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression?
A. The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.

This question is perhaps one of the most significant questions out there - and when explored beyond a surface level, the most enigmatic.  The question is important because if not all mankind fell, then "The Fall" was not as significant an event as Christianity historically posits it to be.  Why?  Because if the The Fall did not involve all mankind (i.e. was not universal) then there is the possibility that there are some people out there who have not sinned - and thus would not need a savior.  I will not explore all the necessary implications of this, but suffice to say it would change our view of mankind, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

I said in the previous paragraph that I will not explore all the implications of a non-universal fall, but I will touch on one: If there are some people out there who do not share in the sin nature and indeed have not sinned, then the problem of evil and the problem of pain becomes much trickier.  The "thorns" of daily life and toil, the presence of death and disease, and the pain, suffering, and sadness these non-sin nature sinless people experience (like the rest of us do) would be unjust.  We could justly ascribe unjustness to God for causing all these things - since these things would affect the unfallen person as well as the fallen person.  For God to be just, the presence of the little "thorns" in life as well as the great calamities needs to be deserved.

We might resort to postulating that while Adam's posterity might not have automatically fallen at his fall, none of his posterity would be able to live a sinless life in thought and action.  That is, just like Adam, they would have to choice whether to choose Good or Evil but would, like Adam, not be able to withstand the temptation of evil.  This sounds good - until you think about babies, severely mentally-deficient people, and the unborn.  How could any sort of pain, sorrow, death, or calamity be "deserved" for these types of people?  If we say they are not deserving of it, we immediately are confronted with creepy solutions of the Andrea Yates variety (i.e. killing them while they are "pure" to ensure they go to heaven.)  Yes, this is creepy stuff - but how do we escape the seeming rationality of that kind of 'solution' unless we posit that we are all fallen and that there is not one innocent among us?

I love my seven-year-old son, and I love his questions.  He's a very thoughtful boy.  He immediately had questions of his own when I introduced WSC Question #16.  He wondered how we could have sinned "in Adam."  He wondered how we know we would do the same thing as Adam if we had been in The Garden.  He was pretty sure that he (my son) would not disobey as Adam had.  Isn't that the way many of us think? I tried the best I could to explain that he in fact would do the same thing - that in fact we all would.  I mentioned the fact that he does and thinks things everyday that he knows are wrong - and so do his parents! With this obvious fact in front of us, what makes us so sure we would be able to withstand the Serpent's craftiness and be perfectly obedient in that context...continually and forever?

I also explained the concept of representation to him.  This can be found fairly clearly in Romans 5:12-21 as well as 1 Corinthians 15:22, although it is also implicitly found throughout all of Scripture. Adam perfectly represented us.  As our congressmen and sports teams represent us and we necessarily share in both their victories and their failures, Adam perfectly represented us.  However, Adam perfectly represented us - because he was specially appointed by God to be our representative.  Our sports teams and congressmen are chosen by us - fallible human beings who do not possess all the facts and who also have very uncertain and fickle judgment.  I explained the concept of God standing outside of the timeline yet acting freely at all points in the timeline while we ourselves are time-bound and cannot do the same thing.  God, standing outside the timeline, possessing all the facts, knowing the end from the beginning, and working all things according to the counsel of His will, appointed Adam as our representative.  We, those of us who lived at any point in subsequent history, in some mysterious but nonetheless very real way, were so perfectly represented by Adam that in the main current of Christian theological history we have been said to be "in Adam" and to have sinned "in Adam."  This identification is so close to actual participation that the "Realist" view (i.e. that we and all mankind were in fact there and participated in Adam's sin) was formally postulated by St. Augustine and has been a viable and orthodox interpretation throughout Christian history.  Whether federally imputed to mankind by perfect representation or whether by some mysterious kind of actual participation, both views leave us with a fallen nature and thereby make sense of all the trials and tribulations we face - which would in either view be perfectly just and perfectly deserved.  This is deep! This is the stuff that makes theology so exciting for me - but also the stuff that makes things very frustrating for a seven-year-old boy.  

I did not have all the answers though.  No one does except for Him to whom we owe worship and all adoration and thanks.  Things are the most interesting when we don't have all the answers, but do have enough to understand the problem and make sense of some kind of solution.  When we don't understand the problem and have no answers it's boring - especially when we're not even able to identify that there is a problem at all.  When we have (or think we have) all the answers to something it becomes uninteresting and boring as well - because there is nothing left to explore; nothing to investigate.  I love my son.  I love him all the more because he cares about stuff.  He identifies weighty issues and he seeks to investigate - as I am convinced we all should.