It is becoming increasingly “popular” to deny the historicity of Adam. Michael Reeves, on the Desiring God site, argues that denying an historical Adam has fundamental theological implications.
Nor it is not just that the biblical genealogies depict Adam as a historical figure, not just that Paul can build core arguments on his belief that Adam was as real a man as Christ (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15). Adam has a significance in the Bible that far outstrips the simple number of mentions he gets. In fact, he has a significance so great that without him we no longer have a recognisably Christian gospel.
Given space restraints, I will point out just two ways mythologizing Adam uproots the gospel.
(1) It Makes God Bad
Let’s put it this way: what if sin did not enter the world at a particular point in time, with a real, historic first sin? . . .
Read the whole thing here.
