Southern Seminary Magazine (Vol 90.1) The Light of Truth: Apologetics in the 21st Century

kyle d. claunch
under the administration of the Law of Moses. The Gospel
of Luke shows us that Adam’s genealogical line continues
past the Old Testament Davidic kings all the way to Jesus
Christ (Luke 3:23–38). The eternal Son of God, the second
person of the Godhead, assumed a human nature, being
made like us in every way so that he could be the one to
make propitiation to God (Heb. 2:14–18). Jesus was everything
Adam was, and he succeeded where Adam failed.
The apostle Paul makes the typological connection between
Adam and Jesus explicit: “Therefore, as one trespass
led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness
leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the
one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so
by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous”
(Rom. 5:18–19).
In another passage, Paul expounds the connection
further, saying,
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also
the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive. . . . Thus it
is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’;
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is
not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then
the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man
of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the
man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and
as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of
heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man
of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of
heaven (1 Cor. 15:21–22, 45–49).
Jesus Christ is the last Adam, the one in whom we
have redemption from the consequences of Adam’s sin
and from the consequences of our own personal transgressions.
“The wages of sin (Adam’s and ours) is death,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our
Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
At this point, some argue that the typological and theological
importance of Adam in relation to Christ does
not depend on the literal historicity of Adam. Adam can
simply be a literary figure whose story makes a profound
theological point. Just as I might instruct my children
about perseverance in hard work by appealing to “The
Tortoise and the Hare” without implying anything about
the historicity of the fabled race, so Paul (and Hosea) can
appeal to the literary story of Adam without implying that
Adam is an actual historical person. This analogy, however,
will not hold up to close scrutiny.
In the case of a literary fable used in moral instruction,
the story is known to be merely illustrative by all who hear it.
There is no history of interpretation of “The Tortoise and the
“Fundamental to
Christian theology is
the happy conviction
that this typological
pattern of new Adamlike
figures did not end
with the failure of the
Davidic dynasty under
the administration
of the Law of Moses.
The Gospel of Luke
shows us that Adam’s
genealogical line
continues past the
Old Testament
Davidic kings all
the way to Jesus
Christ (Luke 3:23–38).”
Hare” that ascribes to it a literal sense. On the other hand,
the vast majority of interpreters of Genesis 2–3—ancient
and modern, Jewish and Christian—have understood
Adam and Eve to be literal, historical people. Indeed, even
those interpreters who deny the historical existence of a
literal Adam (such as Peter Enns 1 and Denis O. Lamoreux
2 ) have admitted that the apostle Paul and even Jesus
summer 2022
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