the relationship between Adam and us is the expression of our true and original nature, so that we would have to recognize in Adam the fundamental truth of anthropology to which the subsequent relationship between Christ and us would have to fit and adapt itself. The relationship between Adam and us reveals not the primary but only the secondary anthropological truth and ordering principle. The primary anthropological truth and ordering principle, which only mirrors itself in that relationship, is made clear only through the relationship between Christ and us. Adam is, as is said in v. 14, typos tou mellontos, the type of Him who was to come. Man’s essential and original nature is to be found, therefore, not in Adam but in Christ. In Adam we can only find it prefigured. Adam can therefore be interpreted only in the light of Christ and not the other way round.
This then is our past—Adam and all of us, Adam in his relationship to us, we in our relationship to Adam. This is the history of man and of humanity outside Christ: the sin and death of a single man, of Adam, the man who in his own person is and represents the whole of humanity, the man in whose decision and destiny the decisions and destinies, the sins and the death of all the other men who come after him, are anticipated. It is also true that each of these others has lived his own life, has sinned his own sins, and has had to die his own death. Even so, the lives of all other men after Adam have only been the repetition and variation of his life, of his beginning and his end, of his sin and his death. That is our past. So were we weak, sinners, godless, and enemies, always Adam in us and ourselves in Adam, the one and the many, in the irremovable distinctness of the one over and against the others, in the irremovable unity of the others with the one. But now our past existence without Christ has no independent status or importance. Because it was constituted by this double relationship between the one and the others, it is now only the type, the likeness, the preliminary shadow of our present existence, which is itself constituted by the relationship between the One Christ and the many others and by the grace of God and His promise of life to men. Now the way in which our past was related to Adam can be understood only as a reflection and witness of the way in which our present is related to Christ. Human existence, as constituted by our relationship with Adam in our unhappy past as weak, sinners, godless, enemies, has no independent reality, status, or importance of its own. It is only an indirect witness to the reality of Jesus Christ and to the original and essential human existence that He inaugurates and reveals. The righteous decision of God has fallen upon men not in Adam but in Christ. But in Christ it has also fallen upon Adam, upon our relationship to him and so upon our unhappy past. When we know Christ, we also know Adam as the one who belongs to Him. The relationship that existed between Adam and us is, according to v. 12, the relationship that exists originally and essentially between Christ and us.
Paul’s next point can best be understood by first passing on from v. 12 straight to vv. 18–19, and then to v. 21. These verses contain the parallel itself. V. 18: “As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s righteous act (dikaiōma) leads to the righteous decision which brings pardon and the promise of life (dikaiōsis zōēs, lit.: justification which leads to life) for all men.” V. 19: “As by the one man’s disobedience many were accounted sinners before God, so by one man’s obedience many shall be accounted righteous.” And then v. 21, which is a summary of the whole: “As sin reigned (i.e., held sway over all men) in death, so through the righteous decision grace reigns unto eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” This parallel must first be seen as such. In both cases there is the one, and in both, the many, all men. Here, in Adam, is the one, who by what he is and does and undergoes, inaugurates, represents, and reveals what the many, all men who come after him, will also have to be and do and undergo. But here, in Adam, are also the many, all men, not one of them the less guilty or the less penalized because he is not himself the one, but each rather finding himself completely in what the one is and does and undergoes, and recognizing himself only too clearly in him. There, in Christ, is, for the first time in the true sense, the One who stands, as such, for all the others. He also is the Inaugurator, Representative, and Revealer of what through Him and with Him the many, all men shall also be, do, and receive. And there, also for the first time in the true sense, are the many, all men, not one of them less righteous or less blessed because he is not himself the One, but each rather finding and recognizing himself again in what this One who takes his place is, and does, and has received. As in the existence of the one, here in Adam, the result for the many, all men, is the lordship of sin, and, with it, the destiny of death; so again, in the existence of the One, there in Christ, the result for all men is the lordship of grace exercised in the divine righteous decision and the promise of eternal life.
That is a general summary of the relationships laid down in vv. 18–19, 21. The parallel is formally complete. In 1 Cor. 15:21–22 also, Paul first makes this formal parallel clear: “As death came through one man, so also the resurrection came through one man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” That is the situation of man here with Adam and man there with Christ. Thus both sides—“Adam and all of us” and “Christ and all of us”—are from the start closely connected, and we immediately become aware of that connection when we see that the same formal relationship that once bound us to Adam now binds us to Christ.
This formal parallel is, however, not Paul’s only concern. Taken by itself, it leaves the material relationship between Christ and Adam still undefined. We still do not know whether, on one side or the other, there is an essential priority and an inner superiority that would make Christ the master of Adam or Adam the master of Christ. Perhaps sin and death are as strong as grace and life. Perhaps they will ultimately prove stronger. It remains still an open question whether Adam or Christ tells us more about the true nature of man. Perhaps it is Adam who embodies basic human nature as it appears in all its many possible forms whereas Christ only embodies it in the one form in which it appears in Christian or religious men: perhaps Christ only tells us the truth about Christians, whereas Adam tells us the truth about all men. But when we look again at Rom. 5, we find that Paul does not deal with the formal parallel between the two sides in isolation, but in a context where their material relationship is made unambiguously clear. Even in vv. 18–19, 21, Paul does not leave it an open question whether Adam is prior to Christ or Christ is superior to Adam. He does not leave the two side by side in a merely formal relationship. It is not enough for him to show that life in Christ helps to explain life in Adam. He is also concerned to make quite clear the material relationship of these two formally parallel sides, so that no uncertainty can remain.
We have already seen that on both sides there is the formal identity of the one human nature which is not annulled or transformed even by sin. But in reaching that conclusion we are bound to recognize that the formal identity itself depends upon the greatest possible material disparity between the two sides. For what we have said about Adam and the rest of us is only valid because it corresponds with what we already know about Christ and the rest of us so that it is Christ who vouches for the authenticity of Adam and not Adam who vouches for the authenticity of Christ.
Therefore the status of Adam is lower than the status of Christ, the sin of Adam counts for less than the righteousness of Christ. So also the relationship of the many to Adam is less significant than their other relationship to Christ. The only thing that is common to both relationships is that in two different contexts true human nature is revealed, and that in two different ways it is shown to be subject to the ordering of God its Creator. But to discover this common factor that connects the two sides, we have to take into account the decisive difference between them. And this difference is that our relationship to Adam is only the type, the likeness, the preliminary shadow of our relationship to Christ. The same human nature appears in both but the humanity of Adam is only real and genuine in so far as it reflects and corresponds to the humanity of Christ.
“The first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is from heaven.” That is how Paul puts it in 1 Cor. 15:47. Christ is above, Adam is beneath. Adam is true man only because he is below and not above, because his claim to be the “first man” and the head of humanity like Christ is only apparent. We are truly men because we, like Adam, are below and not above, because Adam’s claim to be our head and to make us members in his body is only
