Excursus on the Fall and Original Sin, Part 2: An Integral Study of Romans 5.12-21

In part one of this side-quest on the relationship between Genesis 3 and the doctrines of the Fall and original sin, we looked at how the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and New Testament understood the consequences of Adam’s sin. We saw that, while there was nothing in the way of a set ‘doctrine’ in these texts, there was a general belief that linked Adam’s sin to the legacy of sin and death in the world, while maintaining that we are all personally responsible for our own actions. The New Testament reinforced these ideas but added the new belief that, where each and every one of us since Adam has failed in faithfulness, Jesus succeeded, thereby opening up a the possibility of a fresh start for humanity ‘in him’. So, while we see a belief in a ‘Fall’ and the lasting consequence of Adam’s sin in all of these texts, they don’t come close to what came to be the standard Western Christian ideas of the Fall and original sin. But that post stopped short of addressing the biggest text used in support of those interpretations. And that will be the focus of today’s post, which will again use the structure of my Integral Hermeneutic method.

Text

[12] Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— [13] sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. [14] Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

[15] But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. [16] And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. [17] If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

[18] Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. [19] For just 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. [20] But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, [21] so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  (NRSV)

Experience & Encounter

My main experience reading these verses is confusion. Paul’s general argument, comparing what was lost in Adam with what was gained in Jesus, is pretty clear, but the details are confounding. This is definitely something that will require further attention. The text’s lack of clarity is particularly frustrating since these verses have been used to justify extreme theological claims. But I also notice that Paul’s focus is never on Adam’s sin in the text, but always on Christ’s faithfulness and the blessings it has wrought. In focusing on the implications of original sin, this must not be lost.

We meet two main characters here, whom the text contrasts: Adam and Jesus. Adam is defined by his violation of God’s commandment and the mortal consequences this had for the rest of humanity. By contrast, Jesus is defined by his faithfulness and the life-giving consequences this had for the rest of humanity. What stands out to me about this contrast right away is that the main comparison Paul is addressing is not between sin and forgiveness, or bondage and freedom, like we might expect elsewhere in the New Testament, but death and life. I’d like to know more about how this connection works. What kind of connection does Paul have in mind between sin and death, on the one hand, and Christ’s righteous act and life on the other?

This sets up the main questions for the Explore section:

• What’s going on with the grammar, argument structure, and rhetoric of the text itself that might inform the interpretation of the passage?
• How is Paul interpreting Genesis 3 here?
• How does the comparison between Adam’s sin and Jesus’ faithfulness work?

Explore

Grammar, Argument Structure, and Rhetoric

Whatever else we may think about Paul, as an apostle, pastor, and theologian, we have to accept that Paul was not a clear writer. This makes the translation and interpretation of his letters very difficult — which isn’t great considering how important they have been for the development of Christian theology! This passage is a great example of this (Kruse, Witherington). It relies on strings of prepositional phrases, uses non-specific verbs (or leaves them out entirely, leaving the reader to infer the idea required), loses its train of thought in a long digression, and then for all intents and purposes, repeats itself once it gets back on track. If we put all these factors together, we have a situation where the text has so much internal ambiguity that it is a puzzle that is impossible to put together ‘correctly’. (One key phrase alone has six possible interpretations — all of which are ‘literal’ readings!) I won’t go into the specifics here (if you are at all interested in the technical aspects of the Greek, any good academic commentary on Romans will address them), but I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of claims in the text that are clear and unambiguous, but we have to hold any ideas about how they connect together with an open hand.

This is a problem when trying to make sense of the argument structure. Below is what I think makes the most sense from the text. It seems best to think of 5.12 as a failed comparison; Paul starts it, but quickly gets distracted by other things, and doesn’t return to his comparison — which he has to start anew — until 5.18 (Kruse, Witherington). Arranging the text through the idea of comparison is supported not only by the fact that is Paul clearly making repeated comparisons here, but also that comparison was a common and popular rhetorical device of Paul’s day — as shown in the lengthy sections on it in both Hermogenes’ and Quintillians’ rhetorical guides (see Witherington for more on this).

This gives us an argument that looks something like this:

Failed Comparison:

• 5.12: Just as sin (and through sin, death) entered the world through one person, and death has reached all people because all have sinned …

Digression:

• • 5.13: Sin exists apart from the Law, so even those who did not knowingly break God’s Law have sinned
  • 5.14: Adam is typologically connected to Jesus:
    • 5.15: While this typology extends to the effects of the two men’s actions, the effect of Christ’s grace far surpasses that of Adam’s sin
    • 5.16: The effect of sin was condemnation; the effect of Christ’s righteous act is righteousness
    • 5.17: Death reigned through Adam, but life will reign even more through Jesus

Successful Comparison:

• 5.18: Just as condemnation came for everyone through one transgression, so too does righteousness come to everyone through one righteous act
• 5.19 Just as the many became sinners through Adam’s transgression, so will the many become righteous through Jesus’s act of obedience
  • 5.20: The Law interrupted this normal pattern with the effect of increasing sin — but where sin increases, so does grace [this sets up the next argument, starting in chapter 6]
• 5.21: Just as sin reigned in death, so also does grace reign in eternal life through Jesus

Some interpreters would object to the lack of movement I’m proposing here, but the three comparisons are so similar that I feel comfortable suggesting that Paul is going for emphasis here, shifting the contents just enough to cover the connections he’s making. Basically: Adam sinned and so the way of Adam is sin, condemnation, and death; Jesus remained faithful and so the way of Jesus is faithfulness, righteousness, and life.

Romans 5.12-21 and Genesis 3

Now that we have a better sense of what Paul is doing here over all, what might all this say about his interpretation of Genesis 3? Before getting into this, it has to be pointed out that the teaching we see here is not Paul’s purpose in writing Romans; this is an argument to support a larger point, namely that Jews and Gentiles are in the same boat before God and therefore have common cause in the life of faith (Keesmaat, Witherington, Kruse). This means that common examples of Israel’s struggles with sin — say, the golden calf from Exodus 32 or the idolatry and injustices that led to the Exile — wouldn’t suit his purpose as well as had he just been addressing a Jewish audience (Carr). Genesis 3 is the perfect story for him, since it reveals a universal human problem, to which Jesus’s death and resurrection can be a universal solution, and thereby offer a renewed and reunited humanity.

Right off the bat, in 5.12, we see the two ideas that form the consensus we saw emerge in Second Temple Judaism: that 1) Adam’s sin brought sin, suffering, and death into the world; and 2) Everyone has sinned and are responsible for their own mortality. As the passage continues, we get the following added affirmations, which form the ‘before’ parts of the before-and-after picture Paul is painting:

• The effect of Adam’s sin was condemnation (κατακριμα, katakrima ‘guilty verdict, fine, punishment’)
• Death reigned ‘through’ (δια, dia ‘because of, by means of’) Adam’s sin
• The sin of ‘the one’ (Adam) brought the sins of the many
• Sin reigned in death

There is nothing here that isn’t already in view in the statements in 5.12. So, from Paul’s statements alone, there is no evidence that his interpretation of Genesis 3 is different from what was customary in the Judaism of his day (Witherington).

Adam and Jesus

Paul is clearly drawing a contrast in this passage between Adam and Jesus, linking the two figures through typology. And typology brings us squarely into the theological approach called recapitulation: the idea that Jesus brings salvation by doing-over what went wrong with Adam. As I’ve previously written about this:

In the New Testament (though interestingly not really in the Old!), Adam is a symbol of humanity’s shared identity and common vocation, which is “to reflect God’s character in the world, to acknowledge, uphold, and sustain God’s image in others, to tend to and protect the rest of creation, and to live our lives, flourishing and fruitful, for the sake of others.” Adam, of course, failed to live out this calling, thereby introducing sin into the world and setting it on its present default trajectory. As Paul would put it, “sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” But, “if just 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” (Romans 5.13, 19). Jesus’ faithfulness undoes Adam’s faithlessness. To understand this conceptually, we might think of Jesus as a ‘patch’ which fixes a programming glitch that has caused humanity to malfunction. The patch restores humanity to its original programming — but you have to install the patch.

‘Installing the patch’, so to speak, means believing in, and being faithful to Jesus: It’s something that needs to be lived out and in to, not something automatic. Again quoting myself:

Paul’s understanding of salvation is participatory. We are baptized “into” him, we die and rise “with” him” and “united with him.” Elsewhere, he writes that in Christ God “will give life to your mortal bodies” and that “if we suffer with him… we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8.11, 17), and he “giv[es] us his Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1.22). As Stephen Finlan concludes: “It is not a matter of Christ taking the believer’s place, but of the believer sharing Christ’s place.” And again, “For Paul, Christ is the great transporter and transmitter. He transports sin and death out of our lives, and transmits life and goodness into them” (Sacrifice and Atonement, 88 & 93).

All this is to say, for Paul, we are saved inasmuch as we participate in Christ’s salvation, we are given new life inasmuch as we participate in his resurrection.

If this participatory metaphysic seems familiar, it’s because we saw it yesterday in many early Jewish readings of Genesis 3. As 2 Baruch put it: ”Adam is not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam” (54.19). We all die in Adam, inasmuch as we participate and perpetuate Adam’s sin.

So, if I had to make a bet on how Paul understood the consequences of the fall — despite the difficulties in the text that make a strict determination all but impossible — I think I’d have put my money here: Like his Second-Temple-period brothers, he understood the consequences of Adam’s sin to be universal in a participatory way. All die in Adam because all have followed Adam’s lead. There is no indication that Adam’s sin essentially changed human nature, only that it unleashed sin, and with it death — both physical and spiritual — upon it (Gerald Bray, ‘Adam and Christ’, cited in Kruse).

And crucially for Paul’s focus on salvation, all may now live in Christ inasmuch as we follow Christ’s lead. In a sense we’re left in the same place as the ancient Wisdom traditions’ interpretations of the two trees: There’s a choice before us: the tree of life (the way of Christ), or the three of the knowledge of good and evil (the way of Adam). Which are we going to choose (c.f, Keesmaat)?

Expand

This study has looked at Romans 5.12-21, which has been the primary text used to support the classic Western understanding of the Fall and original sin, with a particular focus on how the text understands Genesis 3. While the text is difficult, the study has shown that Paul’s reading of Genesis 3 seems to fit in very well with contemporary Jewish readings of the text: The negative impacts of Adam’s sin for humanity are great and lasting, yet we are all personally responsible for our own sin.

So, two thirds the way through this long excursus on the relationship between Genesis 3 and the Western Christian doctrines of the fall and original sin, those doctrines aren’t faring well. Not only are they not the only way to interpret Genesis 3, through the entirety of the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and the New Testament, there is nothing to suggest anything remotely close to these ideas existed.

 

* For any references not listed below, please see the series bibliography:

Keesmaat, Sulvia C. and Brian J. Walsh. Romans Disarmed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2019.

Kruse, Colin G. Pauls’ Letter to the Romans. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2012.

Witherington, Ben III. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2004.