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Christianity 101: Two Adams (Endnotes)

1. See Lev. 19:2; 20:7,26; 21:8; Josh. 24:19, et al. Close

2. However, He can (and occasionally did) “appear” as a man. Regarding the rare examples of God coming into concretion in the form of a man, see Appendix A (Gen. 18:1 and 2). In these cases, however, God did not actually transform Himself into a man, but took on the appearance of a man so that He could have fellowship with certain people at crucial times in redemption history. Close

3. 1 Timothy 1:17 clearly identifies God as being immortal, meaning that He cannot die. In fact, He is the very Author of Life itself. An enormous burden of proof is laid upon those who would argue that God Himself could die for our sins. If He were able to die, who would raise Him from the dead? See Appendix A (1 Tim. 6:14-16). Close

4. In theological terms, this is called “Adam Christology,” and many scholars acknowledge that this was the “Apostles’ doctrine” concerning the identity of Jesus. James D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (Grand Rapids MI, W. B. Eerdmans, 1989) notes on pp. 114 and 115: “We have…seen how widespread [his emphasis] was this Adam Christology in the period before Paul wrote his letters—a fact not usually appreciated by those who offer alternative exegeses of the [Phil. 2:6-13] hymn.” Dunn also quotes Young: “It is eschatology, not incarnation, which makes Christ final in the New Testament…Christ is final for Paul, not as God incarnate, but as the Last Adam.” The Apostle Paul compares and contrasts Jesus and Adam in three key places in Scripture: Romans 5:12ff, 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 45, and Philippians 2:6-13 (and also Hebrew 2:7 and 8 if Pauline authorship is accepted). We will visit and revisit these passages throughout the book. Close

5. Because the First Adam was genetically flawless, we can safely conclude that the Last Adam was also. Scientific evidence corroborates this truth. In his book, The Seed of the Woman (Brockville, Ontario, Doorway Publications, 1980), Arthur Custance does an admirable job on the subject of the genetic perfection of Jesus Christ. Although the entire thesis of the work is important to our point, pp. 282-286 are especially relevant. Close

6. We use “lamb from out of the flock” to bring together two concepts—first, that Jesus was the true Passover lamb, a lamb taken from the flock of sheep; and second, that there are many Scriptures that say that Jesus was one of us. He was one of the “brothers” (Deut. 18:18; Heb. 2:11), he was a man, the Last Adam, and thus he was like the Passover Lamb in that he was “of the flock,” not an outsider, but truly one of us. Close

7. See Appendix F on the Satan/Christ parallelism, which will also be addressed in Chapter 3. Close

8. It is significant that only two body parts are mentioned in this verse: the head and the heel. The heel represents the time when the Messiah had a body vulnerable to the Serpent’s bite, which caused death. The “head” foretells a time in the future when the Redeemer would be in a place of authority, and able to crush the Serpent’s head. God has given the Promised Seed all the authority he needs to complete the job he has been given. Close

9. The NIV and some other versions make a differentiation in the verbs usually translated “bruise,” “strike” or “crush.” The Hebrew text uses the same word for both verbs used in this sentence. The Hebrew word is shup and it means “to bruise” or “to crush.” Although it could be shown from the entire scope of the Word that the Serpent would only “bruise” Jesus’ heel, and that Jesus will “crush” his head, that truth is not clearly brought out here. It is more accurate to translate the verb shup the same way, either “bruise” or “crush.” The Serpent did crush Jesus’ heel, but having a crushed heel only put him down for a short time—three days and three nights. When Jesus crushes the Serpent’s head, it will put him “down for the count.” Close

10. It is often taught, and until recently we also believed, that Genesis 3:15 was a specific prophecy of the virgin birth because of the phrase “her seed.” We assumed a literal meaning of the word “seed,” equivalent to “sperm,” and took that to be a figure of speech to emphasize that God was the author of such a seed, since a woman does not generate “seed” herself. While the Hebrew word zera, here translated “seed,” occurs more than 200 times in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and does mean “seed” (literally, like what is sown in the ground—See Gen. 1:11, etc.), or “semen” (Gen. 38:9; Lev. 15:16), it can also mean “offspring,” “descendants,” or “children” (Ps. 22:23; Isa. 1:4). It was quite understandable to the Hebrews, then, that in this sense a woman could have “seed,” i.e., children. That fact is very clear in the Old Testament. In Genesis 4:25, when Seth was born, Eve comforted herself over the death of her firstborn, Abel: “Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, ‘God has granted me another child [seed] in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.’ “ This verse makes it very clear that Eve had “seed.” In Genesis 16:10, an angel was talking to Hagar, Abraham’s Egyptian slave, about her children: “The angel added, ‘I will so increase your descendants [seed] that they will be too numerous to count.’ ” The angel was talking to Hagar, and spoke about her “seed,” yet she was not even in the genealogy leading to Christ. Later, when Abraham wanted a wife for his son, he sent his servant, who found Rebekah. As her family sent her away to Abraham, they blessed her and spoke to her of their hopes for her children: “And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, ‘Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands; may your offspring [seed] possess the gates of their enemies’“ (Gen. 24:60).

The book of Leviticus also speaks of a woman having seed: “But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or is divorced, yet has no children [seed], and she returns to live in her father’s house as in her youth, she may eat of her father’s food. No unauthorized person, however, may eat any of it” (Lev. 22:13). The book of Ruth contains a pertinent reference. The elders of Bethlehem spoke to Boaz, who had just stated that he would marry Ruth. The elders said, “Through the offspring [seed] the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah” (Ruth 4:12). In this verse, the offspring, the seed, was the gift of the LORD given to Boaz by Ruth. Obviously we are not talking about the sperm, but we are talking about the children, because it would be by Ruth that the LORD would give children (seed) to Boaz. This same truth is found in 1 Samuel 2:20: “Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, ‘May the LORD give you children [seed] by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the LORD.’ Then they would go home.” Again, the husband is being given “seed” by the wife.

From Hebrew lexicons and from the text of Scripture itself, the word “seed” can mean “offspring” or “children.” Women did have “seed,” not in the sense of “sperm,” but in the sense of “children.” This fact explains why the Jews were not expecting Christ to be born of a virgin, and even Mary herself, a believer and descendant of David, asked the angel how she could give birth to Israel’s Messiah without having a husband (Luke 1:34). We now know that Christ was born of a virgin, and looking back we can see that the possibility is allowed for in Genesis 3:15. However, to say that Genesis 3:15 specifically prophesies a virgin birth is not correct. The verse was written by Israelites for Israelites, and presumably they knew their own language well, yet they read the verse for centuries and understood that it referred to the Messiah, without knowing or believing it foretold a virgin birth. Close

11. It could be argued that God did not create “seed” or “sperm” in Mary that then fertilized her egg, but rather that He created a zygote, a fertilized egg inside Mary that then grew into the child, Jesus. This latter view is the view of all Trinitarians who argue that Jesus, who pre-existed his birth as some form of spirit being, “incarnated” (literally, “came into flesh”) in the womb of Mary. Scripture is not explicit about this, which is not surprising because the conception of Mary occurred long before test tube babies, surrogate mothers and in vitro fertilization. Nevertheless, we believe the language of Scripture is still capable of revealing to us what happened. If God created a zygote in Mary’s womb, we believe the language of creation would appear somewhere in the records of the conception and birth of Christ. Instead, we find that Christ is called the “seed” (Greek = sperma) in the Bible. Also, the Word of God talks of Mary’s “conception,” which would not really be accurate if she had not in fact conceived. Furthermore, when the angel was explaining to Mary how she would become pregnant, the terminology he used of God’s interaction with Mary, i.e., “come over you” and “overshadow you,” seems to portray God’s role as a father and impregnator, not as a creator. Lastly, we would point out that Jesus is said to be from the line of David through his father and his mother. For us it is easier to understand him being called that if Mary were his mother in the ordinary sense of the word. We do not believe that Mary having a genetic contribution to Jesus would have placed his genetic perfection in jeopardy. This is no doubt at least a large part of what Philippians 2:6 (KJV) means when it says that Jesus was in “the form of God.” That is, his body was the result of the direct action of God, even as Adam’s was. The difference between the two Adams in this regard was that one awoke fully formed while the other was formed in a woman’s womb and went through the entire process of human development. Close

12. Two similar Greek words, genesis and gennesis, can be translated “birth.” But genesis can also mean “creation,” “beginning” and “origination.” Since these words are very similar, a scribe could have easily changed the one to the other to eliminate the idea that the so-called “eternal” Son of God had a “beginning,” which was the position of the “heretical” Arians. Bart Ehrman proposes a reason why the text was corrupted in this way, with genesis changed to gennesis:

When one now asks why scribes might take umbrage at Matthew’s description of the “genesis” of Jesus Christ, the answer immediately suggests itself: the original text could well be taken to imply that this is the moment in which Jesus Christ comes into being. In point of fact, there is nothing in Matthew’s narrative [nor Mark’s or Luke’s, for that matter!], either here or elsewhere throughout the Gospel, to suggest that he knew or subscribed to the notion that Christ had existed prior to his birth. Anyone subscribing to this doctrine [of Christ’s “pre-existence” and “incarnation”] might well look askance at the implication that Matthew was here describing Jesus’ origination, and might understandably have sought to clarify the text by substituting a word that ‘meant’ the same thing, but that was less likely to be misconstrued. And so the term gennesis in Matthew 1:18 would represent an orthodox corruption.

Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1993), pp. 75 and 76. See also Chapter 15 on “The Expansion of Piety.” Close

13. The concept of “the pre-existence” of Christ, and its companion concept, “the incarnation,” has caused many problems for theologians. We discuss the issue in detail in Chapter 17. Close

14. See our book by: Mark Graeser, John Lynn, and John Schoenheit, Is There Death After Life? (Spirit & Truth Fellowship International, Martinsville, IN, 2004), Ch. 4, pp. 45-49 Close

15. “The incarnation” is the phrase some theologians have coined to describe “when God became a man.” We assert that the Bible does not teach that God became a man, but rather that He had a Son. Allow us to point out that the word “incarnation” never appears in Scripture. See Chapter 17. Close

16. It is common for Trinitarians to argue that Christ must be God because “a man could not atone for the sins of mankind.” Theologians through the ages have varied greatly in their opinions of exactly how Christ could accomplish redemption for fallen man, and these theological musings can be found in any good theological dictionary under the heading of “Atonement.” However, a standard argument goes something like this: “Mankind has sinned against an infinite God, and therefore the sin is infinitely great. It takes an infinite being to atone for infinite sin, and the only infinite being is God. Therefore, since Christ atoned for sin, Christ must be God.” This argument, which seems reasonable to some people, is man-made, and nothing like it can be found in Scripture. What can be found in Scripture is simple and straightforward: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). There is not a single verse anywhere in Scripture that hints in any way that “God” was a sacrifice for sin.

“The Church Fathers” tried to explain in great detail how Christ could atone for the sins of mankind, and offered many different theories as to how atonement could be accomplished. Origen, Augustine and others believed that Christ was a payment made by God to Satan. Others taught that Christ was not a substitute for man, but rather a representative of man, and somehow the effect of his sufferings and resurrection extend to all mankind. In the Middle Ages, Anselm taught that mankind’s sin offended God, and that Christ’s redemption was an act of “satisfaction,” to appease God. Abelard explained Christ’s atonement in terms of love and the response of love elicited from the sinner due to Christ’s example. The list of man’s theories about exactly how our atonement was accomplished is long, and entire books have been written on the subject.

The reason for the varying theories is that the New Testament does not set forth a “theory of atonement,” it just states the facts of the case, i.e., that Christ’s death paid for sin. Scripture makes many and varied references to the atoning work of Christ. Christ is called a “sacrifice” (Eph. 5:2; Heb. 9:26), a “sin offering” (Isa. 53:10; 2 Cor. 5:21 [NIV alternate reading]), a “ransom” (Matt. 20:28; 1 Tim. 2:6; Heb. 9:15) and an “atoning sacrifice” (Rom. 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). We do not see the need or reason to build a “theory of atonement” when none is offered in the Word of God. The words of the Word are sufficient. As far as the subject of this book is concerned, the most important conclusion that can be drawn from what is revealed in the Word of God is that it is unbiblical to assert that Christ had to be God to pay for the sins of mankind when the Bible explicitly says that payment for sin came “by man.” See also Chapters 16 and 17. Close

17. There can be a distinct difference in the usage of the terms “sin” and “sins” in the Word of God. Often, “sins” refers to the “fruit” of the old nature, while “sin” refers to the “root,” or the old nature itself. See E. W. Bullinger, The Church Epistles (1991 reprint Johnson Graphics, Decatur, MI, 1905) pp. 27 and 28. Close

18. The truth about the position and structure of the Church Epistles is vital for each Christian to understand. See Appendix J. Close

19. See Chapter 14 Close