If Adam was just a myth, then sin is just a myth. And if sin is a myth, then the cross is meaningless. This is why the question of the historical Adam is not a side issue. It goes to the very core of Christianity. Let’s walk through why Adam’s historicity matters across four areas: history, the Bible, theology, and philosophy.
1. What the Early Church Believed
From the earliest centuries, Christian thinkers affirmed Adam as a real historical figure.
- Origen often used allegory, but even he treated Adam as the first man who received a real command from God. His spiritual lessons built on the assumption that Adam’s story really happened.
- Augustine argued passionately that all people inherit sin from Adam. He pointed to practices like infant baptism as evidence: why baptize babies if not to wash away the guilt of sin that traces back to the first man? For Augustine, Adam’s sin was the root of humanity’s need for salvation. While I don’t agree with infant baptism, Augustine clearly advocated for a historical Adam.
- Calvin later reinforced this point. He described Adam as the “root” of corruption, showing how all humanity shares in Adam’s fall. For Calvin, if Adam wasn’t real, then neither was our corruption or Christ’s redemption.
In other words, the weight of Christian tradition insists that Adam is more than a symbol. He is our ancestor and the one through whom sin entered the world.
2. How the Bible Treats Adam
The Bible itself speaks of Adam not as myth but as history.
- Genesis 2–3 introduces Adam and Eve in narrative prose. These chapters flow directly into genealogies (Genesis 4–5) that treat Adam as part of the same historical line as Noah, Abraham, and Israel. In Scripture’s story, Adam is no more “mythical” than Abraham.
- The structure of Genesis reinforces this. Repeated genealogies (the “toledoth” formulas) and sequential narrative markers are typical signs of historical writing.
- Jesus himself appeals to Adam and Eve when teaching on marriage: “From the beginning God made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4–5). His argument assumes that these events truly happened at the dawn of creation. Paul likewise appeals to various points in the first few chapters of Genesis.
If Adam is reduced to symbol or archetype, the biblical story of sin and redemption collapses.
3. Why Theology Needs a Real Adam
Paul’s letters tie salvation directly to Adam’s historicity.
- In Romans 5:12–19, Paul contrasts Adam with Christ. Through one man, sin and death entered the world. Through another man—Christ—righteousness and life are given. The whole parallel loses its meaning if Adam never existed.
- In 1 Corinthians 15:45–49, Paul calls Christ the “last Adam,” the one who reverses Adam’s curse. If Adam is a myth, then Christ’s role is only a metaphor, not the real solution to a real problem.
For both Jesus and Paul, Adam is the hinge of redemptive history. Without him, the gospel loses its grounding.
4. Why Philosophy Points to Adam
Even apart from exegesis, philosophy highlights the necessity of Adam.
- If humanity has always been sinful, then God created us flawed from the start. That makes him the author of sin, which is an idea completely at odds with his goodness.
- If sin is merely the result of chance or human psychology, then death and guilt are statistical inevitabilities, not a moral tragedy. But the Bible frames them as consequences of a fall, a catastrophic moral collapse at the headwaters of human history.
The only coherent way to uphold God’s goodness and the reality of sin is to affirm a real beginning in which Adam fell and humanity was corrupted.
Conclusion: Why This Matters for Us
The question of Adam is not an abstract doctrine that can be rejected without serious consequences. It is a doctrine about why you and I die, and why Christ came to give life. If death really entered the world through one man, then life really comes through one man—the Last Adam, Jesus Christ.
Reject the historical Adam, and the cross becomes a story without a cause. Affirm him, and you see the beauty of God’s plan: through the sin of one came death, but through the obedience of One came eternal life.
If you want to read a more scholarly version of this, you can download a free PDF from Lamad Press.
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L. J. Anderson - Author and Blogger 