I’ve assembled quotations from three of Karl Barth’s books to explain his robust Doctrine of Adam: The Church Dogmatics Vol. IV.1 §60, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, and The Epistle to the Romans (Romans II). I’ve assembled ten statements on Adam to summarized the following quotations from Barth’s works.
#1. There are two biblical passages that explicitly refer to Adam: Genesis 2-3 and Romans 5:12-21 (1 Corinthians 15:22,24 may also be considered.)
#2. These passages contain elements of the Saga literary genre that makes scientific paleontology impossible to derive from them, or for polygenism to be excluded, or for specific information about a historical-Adam to be derived from these biblical texts.
#3. Adam has a twofold interpretation: an individual man and a general title for all individuals, such one meaning always includes the other.
#4. Adam is more than a metonymy, he is a first among equals, such that he represent the rebellion of the first man that all men likewise have joined.
#5. The fallen state of Adam (man) is not a poison that was passed on to Adam’s children or a sexually transmitted disease, but a rebellion that Adam initiated, that all who were around and part of Adam, regardless of physical descent had joined in upon.
#6. This fallen state is the consequence of no single historical act: it is the unavoidable pre-supposition of all human history.
#7. There never was a golden age. There is no point in looking back to one. The first man was immediately the first sinner.
#8. Adam is like the rainbow in relation to Jesus like the sun. Adam is only a reflection of Jesus. The rainbow has no independent existence of the Sun. The rainbow cannot stand against the sun. It does not balance it, and the same is of all people in Adam and the one person of Jesus.
#9. Barth and Calvin teach that the corruption of all mankind in the person of Adam alone did not proceed from ordinary generation, but from the appointment of God.
#10. No one has to be Adam. We are so freely and on our own responsibility. Although the guilt of Adam is like ours, it is just as little our excuse as our guilt is his.
In Christ and Adam, Barth explains how Adam is at once an individual and all of humanity. Adam is an individual and all individuals are Adam.
What Rom 5:12-21 is specially concerned to make clear is that man as we know him, man in Adam who sins and dies, has his life so ordered that he is both a distinct individual and, at the same time, the responsible representative of humanity and of all other men. In the same way there are no other responsible representatives of humanity than individual men. We are what Adam was and so are all our fellow men. And the one Adam is what we and all men are. Man is at once an individual and only an individual, and, at the same time, without in any way losing his individuality, he is the responsible representative of all men. He is always for himself and always for all men.
Barth, Karl. Christ and Adam; Man and Humanity in Romans 5. Trans. T. A. Smail. New York: Collier, 1957. 112-3. Print.
Another quotation from Barth’s Christ and Adam, expands the idea that we are all Adam. No one in particular person is Adam, because all individuals take up Adam’s insurgence. No one is innocent, and no one may say they are wrongly punished for what some other man has done, yet at the same time, we are all one in Adam, and the very first man at his initial step missed the mark and gave into the lordship of sin.
The parallel must first be seen 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 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 promise of eternal life.
Barth, Karl. Christ and Adam; Man and Humanity in Romans 5. Trans. T. A. Smail. New York: Collier, 1957. 42-3. Print.
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