Is a Historic Adam Essential to the Christian Gospel?

 

Special Creation, Not Evolution

There is no room in Genesis for evolution between species.

Literal Creation is Essential to the Bible and the Gospel

We have engaged this issue often in the early going in Genesis—just how important is it?  How important is it to the historic Christian faith that creation be literal and that Adam be a literal, historic person?  It is all important.  The foundation of the Christian faith, the validity of the Bible, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the hope of salvation of man depends upon Genesis' creation being literal and Adam’s having been a historical person.  In Romans 5:14 and 15 we read that through Adam death came into the world and death passed upon all men.  That is because all sinned in Adam.  They did not commit Adam’s transgression but died because of it.  They inherited sin.  Adam, the father, acted and the race was affected by it.  Just exactly as the offense, so also is the free gift.  In this respect they are just alike in that Jesus Christ acted and the whole race was affected.  In 1 Corinthians 15: 21 and 22, the Apostle Paul told the philosophers and intellectuals in Greece:  “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

If all men did not die in Adam, then all are not made alive in Christ.  In that Corinthian chapter, Christ is called the last Adam.  This means that He is the New Man, or the new race of men.  If there is no first Adam, there is no last Adam.  Beyond that, if there was no Adam, then there was no Seth, his third son; and if there was no Seth, there was no Enos; and if there was no Enos, there was no Enoch; and men did not begin to call upon the name of Jehovah. If there was no Enoch, there was no Lamech, which means that there was no Noah, which means there were no Abraham, and no Moses, and no David, and eventually no Jesus Christ.  The third chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a long list of genealogies.  I will skip over many of them now because I do not want to weary you with all the names, but it says “...Who was the son of David... who was the son of Abraham... who was the son of Adam... Who was the son of God.”   We may as well close up the book if creation was not literal and Adam was not historic because we are preaching a doctrine of lies.  If there was no Adam, there was no Jacob.  If there was no Jacob, there were no twelve tribes of Israel, and the Bible was written by fictitious or false people who did not even exist, or else by people who were liars and deceivers and deranged and so it goes.