Salvation and the Unity of Human Nature: Part 2, Adam is Humanity

In the last post I argued that one of the logical implications of the patristic vision of salvation is that human nature is a single, shared ontological reality. Christ assumes human nature, heals it, and reunites it with God. But if Christ only assumed one isolated human individual, then what exactly was healed besides that one individual? The patristic logic seems to require that Christ assumed something we all share. That, at least, is the metaphysical argument.

Before turning to theological considerations, in this post I want to ask if there is anything in Scripture that nudges us in this direction.

One of the striking features of the biblical narrative is how Adam functions less as one individual among many than as humanity itself. Adam's story becomes everyone's story. Adam's exile becomes humanity's exile. Adam's mortality becomes humanity's mortality. And so forth.

For example, in Romans 5 Paul repeatedly speaks as if Adam's act somehow implicated the whole human race:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all sinned...

Adam's act becomes the act of humanity as a whole. Through the one, the many become subject to death. The same pattern appears in 1 Corinthians 15:

For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

Notice that Paul doesn't say that we die like Adam. Rather, we die in Adam. Correspondingly, believers are not merely made alive like Christ. They are made alive in Christ.

The preposition "in" is doing a lot of work here in Paul's theology. Humanity exists "in Adam." And the redeemed humanity exists "in Christ."

To be sure, there have been different ways of understanding Paul's Adam-Christ typology. But for the purposes of this series, it is possible to read Paul as articulating an ontological vision of human nature. Adam isn't just a representative of humanity. Adam is humanity, and humanity is Adam.

Obviously, such a reading is going to sound strange to us moderns. We tend to think that "humanity" is a collection of separate individuals. Humanity is simply the set that contains you, me, and everyone else.

Paul, however, in the reading I'm entertaining, is suggesting a different view. Humanity is created as a single reality that comes to be expressed as many different persons. So, when God creates Adam this isn't merely the first member of the human race. Adam is, rather, the whole human race.

To be sure, we can press this reading of Paul too far. But it is suggestive, and many of the church fathers read Paul in exactly this way. What happened to Adam happened to all of humanity. And what happened to Christ happed to all of humanity. All of which suggests that a metaphysical unity is at work.