Israel’s Recapitulation Of Adam’s Probation Under The Law Of Moses

By David VanDrunen

[David VanDrunen is the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California.]

Reformed theologians have long debated the precise role and purpose of God’s giving the law to Israel at Sinai. They have widely agreed that the covenant of grace and hence salvation in Christ were administered during this era and also that God dealt with his people under Moses in ways unique to their place in redemptive history. Understanding the functions of the law with respect to both salvation in Christ and the distinctiveness of the Mosaic epoch has been deemed important for a number of overlapping reasons. Reformed theologians have always had a high view of the law of God and have sought to organize their theology around the biblical covenants, for example, and the Mosaic revelation has a great deal to say about these topics. Another significant matter is that NT books that have contributed disproportionately to the development of Reformed soteriology—notably Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews—explain and defend doctrines of justification and the atonement interwoven with explanations of the Mosaic law and its unique and temporary purposes. To understand salvation properly, it seems, we need to understand what God designed the Mosaic law to accomplish.

A recent collection of essays by Reformed theologians, The Law Is Not of Faith, explored such issues from historical, exegetical, and systematic angles.[1] A central concern of the book was an idea popular among many older Reformed theologians, namely, that God in some sense republished the Adamic covenant of works through giving the law at Sinai, not as a viable alternative way to eternal life but as a pedagogical tool to advance his broader purposes of salvation by grace through the coming Messiah. Given the perennial Reformed debates about the place of the Mosaic law, and given the eclipse of the republication idea from the sight of most recent Reformed theology, it is no surprise that the book generated reviews expressing a wide range of opinion. Two of the most critical reviews, published by the in-house journals of two Reformed seminaries and written by their president and academic dean respectively, are exceedingly long. One makes implicit accusations of antinomian tendencies among the contributors, and the other bizarrely raises the specter of Pelagianism.[2] Whatever the other accomplishments of the book, simultaneously promoting Pelagianism and antinomianism would be quite an amazing achievement.

The present article is designed to advance contemporary Reformed appreciation for the echoes of Adam in the law of Moses. While I do not focus on responding to reviews, I hope that considerations raised here will help to alleviate some of the critics’ anxieties. With particular reference to the Pauline epistles, I argue that Scripture teaches that one of the key purposes of God’s giving the law at Sinai was to provide a context for OT Israel to recapitulate the probationary experience of Adam in Eden under the original covenant of works. I say “one of the key purposes of God’s giving the law,” for this was surely not God’s only purpose. This was the purpose that Paul highlights, however, in his most soteriologically dense discussions in Galatians and Romans. I thus suggest that recognizing this recapitulation of the Adamic probation is for the well-being of Reformed soteriology generally and the doctrine of justification particularly. It is not of the essence of this doctrine, and many soteriologically orthodox Reformed theologians have not held to such a concept, at least explicitly. But I suggest that the recapitulation idea is for the well-being of Reformed soteriology since the biblical texts that provide the weightiest exegetical foundation for the doctrine of justification explain justification by means of the recapitulation idea. I seek to offer my arguments in a spirit of invitation to those who already hold traditional Reformed doctrines of justification and the covenant of works. There is ample room, I believe, for fruitful and charitable discussions about how to communicate these themes in the most terminologically and pedagogically helpful ways. Paul’s treatment of the law in the texts considered below, however, lends support to the modest claim proffered in The Law Is Not of Faith, namely, that “in some sense” the giving of the Mosaic law republished the original covenant of works.

To make this argument I first consider some brief OT background and then a number of texts and themes in the Pauline epistles, especially Romans and Galatians. Here I interact chiefly with recent scholarship on Paul and the law. Then I offer some specific comments about the relevance of my exegetical conclusions for broader theological questions related to the republication question.

I. Recapitulation In Scripture

1. The Old Testament On Israel’s Adamic Identity

The books of the Torah and the OT at large portray Israel in Adamic terms and interpret Israel’s corporate experience as a recapitulation of Adam’s experience. From a broad perspective, the pattern of Israel’s history mimics Adam’s story in Gen 1-3 in remarkable ways.[3] As with Adam at creation, God brought forth the Israelites out of the waters, placed them in a good and prosperous land, gave them commandments, promised blessing and life upon obedience but threatened curse and death upon disobedience, banished them from their land when they broke his commandments, and wonderfully promised an eschatological intervention to save them from their guilt and exile.

I briefly note some of the evidence for this pattern within the OT. First, God brought forth Israel through the waters in order to bring them to a good and prosperous land, as he had brought forth Adam from the original watery chaos (Gen 1:2) and placed him in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:8). The OT looks back to the Exodus as the time of Israel’s birth as a nation, when God heard his people’s cry from bondage and remembered his promises to Abraham. God brought them out of Egypt and led them through the waters of the Red Sea while the Egyptian armies were deluged (Exod 14). God appointed Canaan as their destination. Deuteronomy describes this land as well-watered, abundant in food, and full of precious metals (8:8-10; 11:10-11), descriptions strikingly like that of Eden (Gen 2:9-14). In various places the OT explicitly likens Canaan to the Edenic garden (see Gen 13:10; Isa 51:3; Ezek 36:35; Joel 2:3). Even the law’s instructions for building the tabernacle (Exod 35-40) and ordaining priests (Lev 8) are filled with creation imagery and provide echoes of Eden.

Second, God gave Israel his law, with promises and threats attached to their response, as he had given Adam legal commands and hinged life or death upon his response (Gen 1:27-28; 2:16-17). God reminded Israel that he had not chosen them or brought them into the land because of their own righteousness, but because of the wickedness of the land’s former inhabitants and his own promises sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (e.g., Deut 9:4-6). But he also gave them his law, promised abundant blessing in every aspect of life in the land if they would “faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments” (Deut 28:1-14), and threatened to curse them holistically within their land and then to “scatter . . . [them] among all peoples” in a degrading exile if they would “not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes” (Deut 28:15-68).[4] In a statement that Paul would use to great effect, God asserted: “You shall . . . keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them” (Lev 18:5). As God established Adam as a king and priest with the probationary commission to exercise royal dominion and priestly service in the Garden (Gen 1:26, 28; 2:15), so God declared Israel “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” if they would “indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant” (Exod 19:5-6).

Finally, God exiled Israel from Canaan because of their disobedience to his law, as he had banished Adam from Eden for his rebellion (Gen 3:22-24). As the fall of Adam was the decisive turning point in primeval human history, so the fall of Jerusalem “was an event without precedent in the history of Israel, and it would become a turning point in Jewish religious development. The destruction of Jerusalem is the event in which the long narrative from Genesis through Kings culminates.”[5] Yet God also promised Israel a gracious eschatological deliverance from the curse of exile, a reminder and focusing of his great Messianic promise to Adam and Eve following their fall (Gen 3:15). These Adamic and Israelite storylines differ in important respects, to be sure. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden after one act of rebellion while Israel and Judah were expelled from Canaan after centuries of rebellion and God’s longsuffering forbearance. Also, Israel received the law already sinful and thus inevitably destined to fail (see Deut 31:24-29), unlike originally upright Adam whose compliance with God’s commands was evidently possible. Nevertheless, the terms of their probations (obedience to God’s commands) and the rationale for their exiles (disobedience to the commands) are similar. Furthermore, as God promised a messianic deliverer to Adam and Eve in the very midst of pronouncing judgment upon them, so God promised Israel that he would restore them and sanctify them through a new initiative of his grace in the very context of predicting their inevitable sin and judgment (e.g., Deut 30:1-14; see Rom 10:6-9). Redemption and eschatological blessing awaited both Adam and Israel on the other side of their exile, in God’s own timing.

2. Romans 5:13-14

Paul picks up the OT idea that Israel’s experience under the law of the Mosaic covenant recapitulates the experience of Adam. The following sections examine a number of places in his epistles that utilize this idea. First is the much-debated Rom 5:13-14: “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” Though the nature of the Mosaic law is not Paul’s principal focus here, his reasoning depends upon a fundamental similarity between the original situation of Adam and the situation of Israel under Moses, with particular respect to the law.

Paul begins 5:13 with the conjunction “for” (γάρ), indicating that 5:13-14 offer explanation of 5:12, where he writes; “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned . . .” Understanding Paul’s explanatory point in 5:13-14, therefore, depends upon an appreciation for his claim in 5:12. The first part of 5:12 is straightforward and derived from Gen 3: sin entered the world through Adam’s fall and this sin introduced death. The second part of the verse is less clear. At a basic level, interpreters must choose between a Pelagian or Augustinian trajectory. Either Paul teaches that death has come to all because all people individually have sinned or that death has come to all because Adam’s first sin was, in some way, the corporate sin of the human race. Despite the attempted rehabilitation of Pelagius among some exegetes grappling with 5:13-14,6 the Augustinian trajectory still commends itself in context. Most importantly, Paul’s point in the following verses (especially in 5:15, 17) is decidedly not that all people’s own sinning has brought them death but rather that the sin of the one man Adam is death’s origin.[7] When Paul finally resumes in 5:18 the comparison that he begins in 5:12 (“just as”), he focuses upon Adam’s one sin and its effects (“one trespass led to condemnation for all men”). In doing so he analogizes Adam’s corporate representation to Christ’s (5:18-19), Christ’s representative action being already a theme addressed earlier in Romans (see 3:25; 4:25; 5:6-8). Adam is, as Paul puts it in 5:14, “a type of the one who was to come,” that is, Christ.[8] In 5:14 Paul also affirms the dissimilarity between Adam and his immediate posterity, noting that those living between the time of Adam and Moses did not sin in a way analogous to their primal father. Paul does indeed say in 5:12 that death came to all because all sinned, but this is precisely the kind of language that Paul uses elsewhere in a corporate or representative way. For example, he writes concerning Christ in 2 Cor 5:14: “one has died for all, therefore all have died.”

Paul’s larger point in this section of Romans, 5:12-21, is to further his explanation of justification through faith begun in 3:21, particularly by expounding the righteous obedience of Jesus Christ on behalf of his people. But Paul accomplishes this by highlighting the similarities and dissimilarities between Adam and Christ. To establish his claims about Christ he must present some basic truths about Adam from which to work, and this he does in 5:12: death came to all people because all sinned through Adam, their corporate representative.

Paul, understandably, seems to anticipate that this bold claim requires a bit of defense, which he provides in the verses under consideration here, 5:13-14. He makes two claims in 5:13. First he states that sin was in the world before the giving of the law at Sinai. This statement seems uncontroversial. Then he notes that sin is not counted, or imputed (ἐλλογεῖται), where there is no law. This claim is not quite so obvious, but it does little more than restate the substance of what he said in 4:15: “the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.” By mentioning these two basic facts in 5:13, however, Paul has triggered a logical conclusion that should trouble his readers’ minds. If sin was in the world before the Mosaic law and yet sin is not imputed where there is no law, then it would seem that the sin of the pre-Mosaic people should not have been counted against them, and if their sin was not counted against them, then presumably they should not have suffered the penalty of death. Yet the spread of death to all is precisely what Paul has just asserted in 5:12. The apostle, therefore, seems to have generated a contradiction between his claims in 5:12 and 5:13.

The way to come to grips with Paul’s argument at this point is not to try to tamp down this apparent tension between the two verses. Paul intended to create the tension. This is evident by the way he begins 5:14. He uses a strong adversative conjunction, ἀλλά (“yet”), indicating that he now makes a point that contrasts with, or is at least unanticipated in the light of, 5:13, and the point he makes (“death reigned from Adam to Moses”) reflects the very thing he asserted at the end of 5:12 (“death spread to all men”).[9] Thus in 5:12 and 5:14 he claims that death has come to all people, including those living between Adam and Moses, while he also claims in 5:13, apparently in opposition to the former point, that the sins of those living between Adam and Moses were not counted against them. Paul has constructed a seemingly incongruous state of affairs in which death, the penalty for sin, has come upon people whose sins were not imputed.

The reason for this apparent tension, however, is to offer evidence for his main point in 5:12, namely, that death has come to all because of Adam’s representative/corporate act of sin. During the Adam-to-Moses period people’s own sin could not explain their death, so there must be some explanation outside themselves. Someone else’s sin must have served as the legal ground for their death, and Adam’s representative transgression is precisely this. Paul has thus offered evidence in 5:13-14 for Adam’s identity, which in turn undergirds his forthcoming explanation of Christ the Last Adam’s identity as redemptive representative of his people.

Paul’s argument in 5:13-14 presumes a very important difference between the situation of Israel under Moses and the situation of those living between Adam and Moses. Under Moses it was evidently easy to understand why death swallowed the people. God gave them the Mosaic law and threatened to hold them guilty and to strike them with curse and death if they disobeyed it. In light of their constant rebellion death was the expected outcome.

Paul’s argument in 5:13-14 makes another presumption, and this gets to the heart of my present case. Paul presumes that, at the very point where Israel under Moses was dissimilar to those living between Adam and Moses, Israel under Moses was similar to Adam. Unlike the pre-Mosaic people, Israel had the law, and therefore their sins were transgressions (see 4:15), that is, their sins were counted against them. But being in this situation, Israel under Moses was similar to Adam, for his sin too was a “transgression” (παράβασις) (5:14) and thus God brought death upon him as a consequence (5:12).[10] By stating that the pre-Mosaic people sinned in a way unlike Adam (5:14), Paul implies that Mosaic Israel sinned in a way similar to that of Adam. The situation of Israel under the Mosaic law reflected the situation of Adam under the law that God imposed upon him, and thus Israel’s sin and consequent guilt and death recapitulated the experience of Adam’s probation, fall, and condemnation.[11]

My interpretation of 5:13-14 provokes a difficult question: how can Paul reason in 5:13-14 on the presumption that pre-Mosaic people were not under law and their sins were not counted against them when he has already argued at length (1:18-2:16) that all people know God’s law and the judgment that sin deserves, because of God’s moral revelation in nature?[12] The solution, I suggest, is not to conclude that Paul is furthering the argument of 1:18-2:16 here in 5:13-14. It is possibly attractive, at first glance, to think that if he speaks of sin and death being in the world from Adam to Moses and claims that sin is not imputed where there is no law, he reinforces the idea of the universality of law.[13] This conclusion, however, totally disconnects 5:13-14 from Paul’s larger point in 5:12-21 concerning Adam and Christ in their representative capacities. Also problematic is that it reads 5:13-14 as stressing the identical experience of all people in their individual sinning and dying, whereas Paul in fact contrasts the particular situation of the pre-Mosaic people from Israel’s experience under the law. Finally, this conclusion is inconsistent with the strong adversative that Paul uses to begin 5:14. Were Paul trying to teach the universality of law in these verses, the idea that death reigned from Adam to Moses would be the natural conclusion following what he wrote in 5:13 rather than an assertion that stands in tension with it.

The better solution to the perceived conflict between the universality-of-law idea in 1:18-2:16 and my interpretation of 5:13-14, which highlights the distinction between the pre-Mosaic people and Mosaic Israel with respect to the law, is to affirm both poles and to recognize that Paul is trying to make different points at these stages of his larger argument in Romans.[14] There is a sense in which those not living under Moses have the law and are accountable to it in ways similar to Israel, and there is also a sense in which those not living under Moses are very different from Israel who has the Mosaic law. In Rom 1-3 Paul is concerned to demonstrate the universal sinfulness and accountability of the human race, in part to silence Jews who boasted about possessing the law of Moses. For this argument, pointing out the ways in which Jews and Gentiles alike know and violate God’s moral requirements is an effective tactic (though even here Paul does not deny the distinctiveness of Israel’s situation, in their having “the oracles of God”—3:2). In Rom 5:12-21 Paul seeks to explain Christ’s work as his people’s representative, in order to further their understanding that justification is by faith in Christ’s work and not by their own works. For this argument, comparing and contrasting Christ and Adam is an effective pedagogical tool, and the dissimilarity of Israel to the pre-Mosaic people, who had no law with sanctions verbally revealed to them by God, helps readers to understand that Adam’s corporate representation must be affirmed in order to explain the reality of death between Adam and Moses.

3. Romans 7:7-12

Another Pauline text that treats OT Israel’s experience as a recapitulation of Adam’s is Rom 7:7-12. Like Rom 5:13-14, these verses have stirred considerable debate in the scholarly literature, though not as famously as the verses following, 7:13-25, in which the “I” describes his struggle with sin. The weight of the evidence, I conclude, suggests that in 7:7-12 Paul makes a dual allusion to the experience of Adam receiving God’s commands at creation and to the experience of Israel receiving the law at Sinai.[15]

Romans 7:7-12 falls after a lengthy passage triggered by an antinomian sort of objection that Paul anticipates in 6:1. Having set forth in 3:21-5:21 the doctrine of justification through Christ, received by faith apart from works, Paul seeks to answer the charge that his theology promotes a lax attitude toward sin. He proceeds to explain that believers have died to sin and are no longer enslaved under its power, since they have died with Christ and died to the law. Paul concludes this section with particular emphasis upon the fact that believers have been released from the law and that this is the very reason why they now walk in the ways of the Spirit and bear fruit to God (7:4-6). With this strong conclusion Paul has answered his imagined critic: the freedom from the law granted in justification, far from promoting antinomianism, actually results in holy conduct generated by the Spirit. This important conclusion, however, provokes Paul to address another troubling objection. If the law represented a sort of bondage, and dying to it means sanctification by the Spirit, then is the law itself sin (7:7)? Paul vigorously denies that conclusion, and in the following verses explains that, while the law itself is good, sin (personified) has used the law to stir up all disobedience in those who hear it.

A key exegetical question concerns the identity of the “I” whom Paul describes as being alive apart from the law but then hearing the law (specifically the command not to covet), being deceived by it, falling into sin, and dying. Most interpreters reject the notion that Paul is simply relating his own personal experience. There is no evidence in the Pauline corpus that he especially struggled with covetousness in his early life. More importantly, that Paul believed he once lived “apart from the law” and then was suddenly confronted by it (7:9) is highly unlikely for one who identified himself as “circumcised on the eighth day . . . , a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil 3:5). Instead, Paul likely adopts some sort of rhetorical technique by which he uses the first person singular to assume the role of another.[16] But who is this other? The two most popular candidates are Adam in Eden and Israel at Sinai.[17]

The arguments for Adam and for Israel both seem to proceed beautifully when the specific statements of 7:7-12 are considered. In 7:7-8 Paul isolates the tenth commandment, “you shall not covet,” as the law confronting the “I.” On the one hand, this is a direct quotation from the Decalogue given to Israel on Mount Sinai. On the other hand, the fact that Paul chose this particular commandment out of all the many Mosaic decrees is strikingly appropriate if he were trying to allude to the sinful desires emerging in Eve as described in Gen 3:6.[18] Then, in 7:9, Paul states that the “I” was alive apart from the law, but that when the commandment came he died. This fittingly describes Israel before and after Sinai. Prior to Sinai they were in possession of the life-giving promises to Abraham and had just been released from bondage in Egypt, but after Sinai they were soon condemned for disobedience and consigned to death in the wilderness. Yet this description in 7:9 fits Adam as well. He was given the breath of life (Gen 2:7) and was then sentenced to death after the giving and violation of God’s commandment (Gen 3:19). In Rom 7:10 Paul states that “the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” Again, this description fits both the Israelite and Adamic contexts. With respect to Israel, one of Paul’s favorite OT verses for describing the Mosaic law is Lev 18:5: “if a person does them [God’s statutes and rules], he shall live by them” (see Gal 3:12; Rom 10:5). With respect to Adam, a promise of life attached implicitly to the commandment given to Adam in Gen 2:17, since the threat for disobedience was death and the tree of life beckoned nearby (Gen 2:9).

Various considerations point to Israel while others point to Adam. On the Israel side, for example, is the simple fact that the chief concern that initiates 7:7-12 is a serious question about the law of Moses in light of Paul’s seeming disparagement of the law in previous pericopes. Were Paul not addressing the law of Moses at some basic level in 7:7-12 then he would fail to address his interlocutor’s concern. Furthermore, N. T. Wright has argued rather persuasively that a “new exodus” theme pervades Rom 5-8 and that in 7:7-12 Paul arrives with his readers at Sinai.[19] Other considerations simultaneously point readers back to the account of Adam. Romans 7:11, for example, says that sin used the law to “deceive,” the word with which Eve described her own experience of temptation (Gen 3:13) and which Paul uses elsewhere when alluding to Gen 3:13.[20] In addition, Wright notes the numerous allusions to the story of Cain in Gen 4 which Paul seems to make in the very next verses, Rom 7:13-20.[21] Such allusions to Cain add further reason to see reference to Adam in the immediately preceding text.

In the end, seeing simultaneous reference to Israel at Sinai and Adam in Eden is compelling, whichever reference might be primary. This is not, I believe, a cop out position, but rather an honest recognition of the weight of evidence on both sides. It is telling that a great number of commentators who argue either for an Israel-focused or Adam-focused interpretation of 7:7-12 also concede that Paul is at least making allusions to the other. The conclusion that Paul makes a dual reference is entirely plausible in the light of his larger argument in Romans, since he has already associated the experiences of Adam and Israel in the verses considered above, 5:12-21. Romans 7:7-12 continues in the same vein and thus adds additional evidence that Paul, following the OT’s own perspective, viewed the experience of Israel—particularly with respect to receiving and responding to the law—as a recapitulation of Adam’s probation and fall in Gen 1-3.

4. The Mosaic Law And Paul’s Two-Adams Paradigm

The claim that the experience of Israel in receiving and responding to the law recapitulates the experience of Adam in Eden finds further support in the way that Paul develops his “Two-Adams” idea. On two occasions—Rom 5 and 1 Cor 15—Paul compares the work of Adam in bringing death with the work of Christ in bringing salvation. He associates Adam with sin, death, and condemnation while he associates Christ with righteousness, resurrection life, and justification. In 1 Cor 15:45 Paul refers to the two as the “first Adam” and “last Adam.” They represent two humanities: humanity fallen and humanity redeemed. Those identified with the first Adam are under the sway of sin and decay while those identified with the last Adam are liberated from these enemies and have the hope of eternal life. This striking Pauline framework is important for present purposes because in the only two places where Paul explicitly compares the Two Adams he also discusses the Mosaic law, and on both occasions he places the law on the side of the first Adam.[22] Romans 5:20 and 1 Cor 15:56, we will see, bolster the case for seeing Israel’s experience under the Mosaic law as a recapitulation of Adam’s experience in Eden.

I comment first on Rom 5:20. As discussed above, in Rom 5:12-19 Paul explains justification by faith by identifying Adam as corporate representative of the human race, through whom sin and death entered the world and leave all human beings condemned, and by comparing Christ to Adam insofar as the former’s corporate representation overcomes Adam’s deadly work and brings justification and life to the world. Immediately upon finishing a series of verses that place Adam and Christ side-by-side, Paul writes, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (5:20-21).

Though Paul does not mention Adam’s name again in 5:20-21, he continues to think in the same Adam-Christ terms that have structured his discussion in previous verses.[23] As in each verse from 5:15 to 5:19, in both 5:20 and 5:21 Paul compares one set of realities to another. Romans 5:20 and 5:21, furthermore, compare sets of realities associated in 5:15-19 with Adam (trespass, sin, and death) to sets of realities associated in 5:15-19 with Christ (grace, righteousness, and life). Paul is thinking in the same dual terms. In this context Paul re-introduces the Mosaic law and places it explicitly on Adam’s side of the ledger. The law serves to increase the trespass.[24] Paul handles the law in a way distinctly at odds with the views of his contemporary Jewish compatriots.[25] Contrary to Jewish opinion, Paul speaks of the law not as God’s remedy for the problems of fallen humanity but as something that confirms and exacerbates the problems. As one writer puts it, for Paul the law does not bring a new era of blessing but “actually entrenches man in death.”[26] According to 5:20, the law “came in,” and that was not good news per se.[27]

While Paul’s reference to the Mosaic law in Rom 5:20 is not unexpected in context, 1 Cor 15:56 has been an enigma to many interpreters. Disputes about the law have in no way dominated discussion to this point in 1 Corinthians, and not a word about the law appears throughout Paul’s lengthy disquisition on the resurrection earlier in ch. 15. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Paul states: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” How to explain this sudden, and weighty, mention of the law? An older opinion still occasionally defended today is that this verse does not make sense in context because it is an interpolation and not a genuine part of the original epistle, despite the lack of any textual evidence in support.[28] On the contrary, 15:56 makes a great deal more sense in context than is usually appreciated, and the force of Paul’s statement is very similar to his point in Rom 5:20: the Mosaic law confirms people in their identity with fallen Adamic humanity.

An initial point suggesting that Paul’s (negative) reference to the law in 15:56 is not really out of place in 1 Corinthians is the fact that Paul has previously mentioned or alluded to the Mosaic law, and both times with negative connotations.[29] In 7:19 Paul comments that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, thereby relativizing the old covenant requirements. Likewise, in 9:20 Paul claims that he is not “under the law,” even though he willingly acts like he is in certain circumstances “in order to win Jews.” Beyond these brief clues from earlier in the epistle, however, is the more significant point that the statements in 15:56, read in context, sound so entirely Pauline.[30] That sin brings death and that sin (personified) uses the law as its tool are themes that we have already observed in Rom 5 and 7 and that also appear in Galatians. In addition, Paul raises these themes in 1 Cor 15:56 when the Two Adams are in his thoughts, which is precisely what he does in Rom 5 (and to some extent in Rom 7). The Mosaic law may seem to come out of nowhere in 15:56 to the reader’s first glance, but to Paul’s theological mind it must have been an obvious topic to raise. In fact, that Paul would mention the law here, where no specifically law-focused controversy was at issue, may indicate just how thoroughly entrenched in Paul’s thought was the connection between the Mosaic law and the forces of sin and death identified with the First Adam. But how exactly does Paul connect Adam and the law in 1 Cor 15?

Understanding Paul’s statement in 15:56 requires going back at least to 15:22, where Paul makes a programmatic statement that gives focus to the rest of the chapter: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”[31] The First Adam brings death for those identified with him and the Last Adam brings resurrection life for those united to him. In 15:23-44 Paul proceeds to discuss various truths about the resurrection and then in 15:45-50 returns explicitly to the Two-Adams theme. As in Rom 5:15-19 he sets the Two Adams side-by-side in an extended comparison, attributing opposite characteristics to each. He associates Adam and Christ, respectively, with death and resurrection, with the natural and the spiritual, with dust and heaven, and with perishability and imperishability. Paul then describes the day of resurrection at Christ’s return, when death will be decisively defeated (15:51-55). This is the point at which Paul speaks of sin as the sting of death and the law as the power of sin (15:56). The law, in other words, is the tool of sin, which in turn is death’s sting. The law serves to confirm and strengthen the reign of death under the First Adam. As in Rom 5:20, the law per se serves a negative function. And as also in Rom 5:20-21, Christ the Last Adam serves to rescue people from the forces of death with which he associates the law: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The Mosaic law stands explicitly on the First Adam side of the Two-Adams ledger.

Romans 5:20 and 1 Cor 15:56, therefore, add further weight to the claim that the experience of Israel under the Mosaic law served as a recapitulation of Adam’s experience of probation, fall, and condemnation in Eden. The Mosaic law, whatever Christ-anticipating prophetic features it also displayed, served to bind those under its authority ever more tightly to the powers of sin and death ushered into the world in the rebellion of Adam. Living under the law confirmed OT Israel in their protological Adamic identity, from which God would rescue them through the coming of Christ and his eschatological blessings.

5. The Sanctions Of The Mosaic Law According To Paul

I noted previously how the Mosaic law, especially Deuteronomy, attached sanctions of blessing or curse to Israel’s response to the law. Israel recapitulated Adam’s probation and, on account of their disobedience, Adam’s condemnation and exile. This idea comes to the fore again in this section of the essay. Paul, understanding Israel’s experience as a recapitulation of Adam’s, particularly with respect to the Mosaic law, describes the law as demanding (perfect) obedience and bringing a curse because of Israel’s failure to render it. This pattern of Paul’s thought is most clearly evident in Galatians, though I will note similar material in other epistles.

In Gal 3:10 Paul says that those who are of the “works of the law”32 are under a curse, and proves it by quoting Deut 27:26: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Paul follows the LXX in adding the word “all” to the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy, hence emphasizing the entirety of the obedience that the Mosaic law demands. For this verse to prove his point (that all people who are under the law are also under a curse), Paul must be working with an implied premise: no one actually keeps the law perfectly.[33] In light of Paul’s view of human depravity outside of Christ, presented explicitly in later epistles (e.g., Rom 3:9-21; 8:7-8), this implied premise is eminently Pauline. The apostle expands his point in the following verses. In 3:11 he quotes Hab 2:4 (“the righteous shall live by faith”) to show that no one can be justified by the law. The law, he adds in 3:12, “is not of faith.” He proves this claim by quoting again from the law, this time Lev 18:5: “The one who does them shall live by them.” While faith promises life by believing, the law promises life by doing.[34] Paul’s larger point in Gal 3:10-12, therefore, is that the Mosaic law demands perfect obedience, promising life, but that it inevitably brings a curse because sinful human beings disobey it. Paul echoes these sentiments in Gal 5:2-4, where he says that those seeking to be justified by the law are “obligated to keep the whole law”—a strong demand for perfect obedience[35]—and find no benefit from Christ. In context, Paul obviously does not consider this a viable option, but one that ends inevitably in failure.

In the previous paragraph I have used footnotes to acknowledge interpreters (many of them commonly associated with the so-called New Perspective on Paul) who take a different view of Gal 3:10-12 and 5:3 and deny that Paul is really setting up a contrast between faith and obedience to the law and teaching that the law requires perfect obedience. At this point I note briefly that a number of recent Reformed commentators acknowledge that Paul is sharply contrasting faith and works of the law in these and parallel passages, yet deny that the Mosaic law itself can be contrasted with faith (in this sense adopting a similar conclusion to many New Perspective advocates). Instead, these Reformed commentators believe that when Paul quotes Lev 18:5 or refers otherwise to the law so as to contrast it with faith he thinks not of the Mosaic law itself but of the law as misinterpreted in a legalistic way by his Jewish contemporaries.[36] In my judgment this line of interpretation should also be rejected.[37] That Paul dealt with people whom he judged to have misinterpreted the purposes of the Mosaic law is unquestionable, but that the law itself stood in contrast to faith, at least in certain respects, was Paul’s own view. That Paul would concede the interpretation of Lev 18:5 to legalistic Judaizers both in Gal 3:12 and Rom 10:5 (where he introduces his quote by saying, “Moses writes” about the righteousness of the law) is far-fetched. Furthermore, in Gal 3:19 Paul asks a rhetorical question, understandable in light of the contrast of law and faith in previous verses: “Why then the law?” His explanation in 3:19-4:7 is that God’s own purpose in giving the Mosaic law was to keep his people imprisoned under sin for a time, a condition from which Christ released those who believe in him. In this same section of Galatians Paul speaks of Christ himself being “born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (4:4-5), which must be speaking of the Mosaic law in the light of preceding verses. As Israel was under the Mosaic law so Christ came under the Mosaic law. Yet Paul could hardly have been asserting that Christ, whom he says elsewhere “knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21), lived under a subjective misinterpretation of the law. Both Christ and the Israelites came “under the law” in an objective sense that reflected God’s own purposes in giving it—but where the Israelites failed Christ prevailed.

Despite these considerations it may still be difficult to think that Paul really believed that the Mosaic law itself, in some significant respect, stands in contrast to faith. After all, Paul considered OT saints to be people of faith (e.g., Rom 4:4-6) and sometimes exhorted NT saints to obey Mosaic commands (e.g., Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14). But since Paul saw one central purpose of the Mosaic law to be the establishment of Israel as a recapitulation of Adam, Paul’s contrast of faith and the Mosaic law is readily understandable. God intended the Mosaic law to function for Israel in a way analogous to how God’s primordial law to Adam functioned in Eden: promising life for obedience and threatening death for disobedience. But God sent his Son as a second Adam, such that by faith in him, who redeemed those under the law (Gal 4:5), his people might no longer be associated with the First Adam. Life under the Mosaic covenant was meant, in part, to mimic the experience of the First Adam; life under the new covenant decidedly is not.

These observations should help to provide a response to Heikki Räisänen’s assertion that Paul, inconsistently, held Jews to a higher standard than Christians, for Paul condemned Jews for failure to render perfect obedience to the Mosaic law while not expecting such performance from Christians.[38] Räisänen makes a valid observation, but this feature of Paul’s thought reveals the depth of his Two-Adams theology rather than an inherent tension. For Paul, NT Christians had escaped the bondage of the Mosaic law insofar as it associated people with Adam and his failed probation. Not being condemned for lapses in obedience is precisely the glory of the gospel that Paul preached “apart from the law” (see Rom 3:21). Along similar lines, Räisänen also mistakenly accuses Paul of contradiction when he makes the otherwise accurate observation that Paul teaches both that the Mosaic law promised life (e.g., Gal 3:12; Rom 7:10) and that it could not lead to life, even in principle (e.g., Gal 3:21).[39] Insofar as the Mosaic law was designed to replicate the probationary status of Adam it held out life as the consequence of obedience, and nowhere does Scripture indicate that perfect obedience would not have produced this promised blessing. Yet the Mosaic covenant was not a simple do-over. The Israelites were sinners and were already condemned in Adam before arriving at Sinai. They would inevitably disobey the law. God’s ultimate purpose for the Mosaic was not to replicate the Adamic covenant simpliciter but to highlight the miserable state of Adamic humanity so that grace might abound “all the more” through the work of Christ in the last days (Rom 5:20-21). In this sense, according to Paul, God never intended the Mosaic law to be his people’s vehicle to life (Gal 3:21).

II. Implications For The Republication Question

In this final section I consider some theological implications of these exegetical conclusions. I suggest that the Pauline teaching examined above should encourage Reformed theologians who have general antipathy to the republication idea to reconsider their sentiments. Though it is clear that God did not give the Mosaic law solely to bring Israel through a recapitulation of Adam’s probation and fall, this was at least one of God’s purposes. It must also have been a significant purpose, since it is the purpose Paul highlights in his grandest portrayals of Christ’s coming and the salvation it brings.

The evidence from Paul’s epistles, therefore, indicates that any general rejection of interpreting the Mosaic covenant through the lens of Adam’s original experience is not tenable. I have in mind, for example, John Murray’s warning that we should avoid “any attempt to interpret the Mosaic covenant in terms of the Adamic institution” (which grounds his subsequent conclusion that “the view that in the Mosaic covenant there was a repetition of the so-called covenant of works, current among covenant theologians, is a grave misconception and involves an erroneous construction of the Mosaic covenant, as well as fails to assess the uniqueness of the Adamic administration”).[40] To say that the Mosaic covenant cannot be interpreted only in terms of the Adamic institution would be accurate, but to forbid “any attempt” to do so prohibits precisely what Paul requires. It is heartening to note that Murray himself did not always abide by his own rule. Confronted by the evidence of Rom 5:20, for example, he writes: “It is difficult . . . to see how the one trespass of Adam was made to abound by the entrance of the law. The solution would appear to be that there is allusion to the trespass of Adam as supplying the pattern of that which is made to abound by the entrance of the law. . . . This is not a definition of the whole purpose of the giving of the law by Moses. Other purposes are stated elsewhere but this is the purpose most relevant to the doctrine which the apostle proceeds to unfold” (emphasis added).[41] If God indeed gave the Mosaic law in part to cause Adam’s experience to be replicated in Israel’s experience, it is quite inconsistent of Murray to accuse fellow Reformed theologians of a “grave misconception” when they see “a repetition of the so-called covenant of works” as one of God’s multiple purposes in giving the Mosaic law.[42]

To advance the discussion a little further, I note next that this divine purpose of recapitulation was unique to Mosaic-era Israel in comparison to other administrations of the covenant of grace. To the extent that the Mosaic law was meant to bring Israel through an experience like Adam’s in the Garden it was something that the patriarchs under the Abrahamic covenant and Christians under the new covenant did not and do not experience. This seems evident in many of the Pauline passages considered above. For example, when Paul speaks of Israel’s experience under the Mosaic law in Adamic terms in Rom 5:13-14 and 5:20 he speaks of it as something introduced at Sinai that was not present before. And his subsequent emphasis that Christians are not “under the law” but have “died to” it and been “released from” it (6:14-15; 7:4, 6) is difficult to reconcile with any notion that God’s law continues to drag Christians today through repetitions of Adam’s failure. God does not give new covenant believers the law in order “to increase the trespass” (cf. Rom 5:20). He does not give us the law with the promise that we will enjoy earthly blessings (typological of heaven) if we obey nor with the threat that we will suffer earthly curses (typological of hell) if we disobey. That may loosely resemble the health-and-wealth gospel, but not the Pauline (and Reformed) gospel.

These points are worth highlighting, I believe, because of the tendency among critics of the republication idea to equate the basic experience of Israel under the Mosaic law with the experience of new covenant believers under God’s law today. Cornelis Venema, for example, identifies one of the chief difficulties of the republication idea as its struggle to affirm the continuing use of the moral law for new covenant believers, a problem not encountered if we recognize the traditional “three uses” of the law, which have applied to believers in every administration of the covenant of grace and do not function at any level as a republished covenant of works.[43] To my knowledge, proponents of the republication idea do not in fact struggle to affirm the abiding validity of the moral law,[44] but I wish to focus here on Venema’s comments about the three uses. Like Venema, I affirm that the three uses recur at every stage of redemptive history. But Venema wrongly concludes from this idea that the republication doctrine is incorrect. The three uses idea is true, but it is not sufficient, at least as stated by Venema, to explain many Pauline texts. If one purpose of God in giving the law to Israel was to increase the (Adamic) trespass and it is not his purpose to do so when giving the law to Christians today (praise God for that!), then things are more complicated than a mere appeal to the three uses can express. To put it a bit differently, if Rom 5:20 refers simply to the first (pedagogical) use of the law, then the first use of the law is inapplicable to new covenant believers; but if the first use of the law is indeed applicable to new covenant believers, then Rom 5:20 is not referring simply to the first use. How to harmonize effectively the three uses doctrine and the republication doctrine is an excellent question for Reformed theologians to pursue. But we should not dismiss the question altogether by jettisoning one doctrine for the sake of the other.

Similar comments might apply to Murray’s claim that “there is nothing that is principially different in the necessity of keeping the covenant and of obedience to God’s voice, which proceeds from the Mosaic covenant, from that which is involved in the keeping required in the Abrahamic,” or his similar statement elsewhere that “the demand for obedience in the Mosaic covenant is principially identical with the same demand under the gospel.”[45] Such claims may be salvageable if we compare believers’ experience under the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and new administrations of the covenant of grace purely in terms of the ordo salutis. Sanctification bears the same relation to regeneration, faith, and justification under all administrations of the covenant. But as with Venema’s appeal to the three uses, Murray’s (implicit) appeal to the ordo salutis is not sufficient to explain Paul’s teaching about the Mosaic law. Israel uniquely experienced God’s law as (in part) a recapitulation of Adam’s experience in the covenant of works. In terms of the historia salutis, Israel’s experience of the law was not “principially identical” to Christians’ experience of the law today.[46] How to describe the psychological experience of Mosaic-era saints as they enjoyed the same ordo salutis as Christians today and also experienced a recapitulation of Adam’s probation and fall through their membership in corporate Israel is another excellent question that may be profitable for Reformed theologians to pursue.[47] But again, we should not dismiss the question altogether by jettisoning the historia salutis for the ordo salutis or vice versa.

I conclude this article by identifying two ways in which the recapitulation idea may help Reformed theologians defend their doctrine of justification more effectively than they would otherwise. I wish to emphasize that I defend the recapitulation idea not in order to question the orthodoxy of soteriologically sound Reformed theologians but in order to bolster our common defense of justification, the active obedience of Christ, and related doctrines.

First, recognizing the Mosaic recapitulation of the Adamic probation enables us to explain why Paul would explain justification as being “not under the (Mosaic) law” and as having “died to” and been “released from” the (Mosaic) law (Rom 6:14-15; 7:4, 6; cf. Gal 3:24-25; 4:4-5, 21; 5:18)—or, alternatively, why forcing Christians to “live like Jews” is nothing short of perverting the doctrine of justification by faith (Gal 2:14-16). These statements are potentially puzzling. Paul clearly believed that Mosaic-era saints were justified by faith (e.g., Rom 4:6-8) and that pagan Gentiles were in need of justification, so how could being under the Mosaic law have anything to do with one’s justification? Such considerations have prompted some Reformed theologians to conclude that when Paul speaks of justification in terms of being not under, or released from, the law, he must not be referring to the Mosaic law.[48] Yet in the context of Rom 3-7 or Gal 3-5, where the Mosaic law is so frequently in the foreground, such a move, while theologically orthodox and understandable, is exegetically tenuous. It sets up Reformed theology, I fear, for the accusation that it manipulates inconvenient texts in order to support its key doctrines. But the recapitulation idea, present in these very contexts in Romans and Galatians, provides a helpful explanation for this potential problem. Justification is indeed ultimately not about whether a person is under the Mosaic law as a member of corporate Israel, but about whether a person is under the federal headship of the first Adam or the last Adam (see especially Rom 5:15-19). But insofar as one of the chief divine purposes for the Mosaic law was to cause OT Israel to recapitulate Adam’s probation and fall, being under the Mosaic law was a profound illustration of the plight of humanity under the first Adam. Therefore, God’s taking new covenant believers out from under the Mosaic law was a profound illustration of their release from Adam’s headship in their justification. The movement of the historia salutis from Mosaic covenant to new covenant reflects the movement of the ordo salutis from condemnation to justification (without at all implying that saints under the Mosaic covenant were not personally justified). In light of this dynamic, Paul’s assertion that to be justified is to be not under the (Mosaic) law makes eminent sense.[49]

Second and finally, the recapitulation idea helps to explain why Christ as the Last Adam came under the Mosaic law and why God reckoned his obedience to the Mosaic law as satisfying the claims of the covenant of works. The Reformed doctrine of active obedience contends that Christ sustained the probation that Adam failed, yet Christ was not placed in the Garden of Eden to guard it and avoid the forbidden fruit. He sustained Adam’s probation in large part through perfect fidelity to the Mosaic law. The idea that life under the Mosaic law was a recapitulation of Adam’s probation wonderfully illumines this truth. By recapitulating Adam’s probation, Israel’s probation was typological of Christ’s probation. God placed OT Israel “under the law” (Gal 3:23) until the fullness of time when he brought forth his Son “under the law” (Gal 4:4). As noted above regarding Rom 5:13-14, when Paul called Adam a type of Christ he did so while likening Israel’s experience under the law to Adam’s experience. One of Venema’s key points of critique of the republication idea—and this is related to his statements about the three uses noted above—is that it fails to reckon with the following statement: “Consistent with the pattern of biblical typology, the promises and demands of the Mosaic economy are ‘typical’ of the promises and demands of the new covenant economy.”[50] In response I happily concede that some OT typology points to the experience of new covenant believers, but first and foremost OT typology points to Christ and his once-for-all completed work. And in Gal 3-4 and Rom 5:12-21, for example, Paul certainly does not present the promises and demands of the Mosaic economy as typical of our experience with God’s law today as new covenant believers. Rather, the demands and promises (note the order) of the Mosaic economy are here typological of Christ’s experience “under the law,” by which he, as the true Israel, sustained Adam’s probation, so that his people would never again, in any sense, replicate Adam’s fall.

In conclusion, I note that if Paul, following OT leads, teaches that Israel’s experience under the Mosaic law recapitulated the probation and fall of Adam, then the republication idea cannot be dismissed as foreign to Reformed theology and sound biblical exegesis. Rather, it is important for Reformed theologians, for the sake of mustering the most robust explanation and defense of their soteriology possible, to acknowledge and wrestle with these echoes of Adam in the law of Moses.

Notes

1. The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant (ed. Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2009).
2. Cornelis P. Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant: A ‘Republication’ of the Covenant of Works?” (review of The Law Is Not of Faith), Mid-America Journal of Theology 21 (2010): 35-101; and James T. Dennison, Jr., Scott F. Sanborn, and Benjamin W. Swinburnson, “Merit or ‘Entitlement’ in Reformed Covenant Theology” (review of The Law Is Not of Faith), Kerux: The Journal of Northwest Theological Seminary 24 (December 2009): 3-152.
3. For another treatment of this issue, which has aided my own presentation, see G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 116-17.
4. Scripture quotations in English are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
5. Adele Berlin, Lamentations: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 1.
6. E.g., see J. C. Poirier, “Romans 5:13-14 and the Universality of Law,” NovT 38 (1996): 244-58.
7. See John Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 19-21.
8. Robin Scroggs makes the interesting suggestion that the “one who was to come” is Moses rather than Christ; see The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 80-81. However, given the way Paul develops at length the Adam-Christ comparison in the following verses, which includes similarities as well as dissimilarities, it is much more likely that he refers to Christ than to Moses in 5:14.
9. Recognizing and defending this adversative and the consequent contrast between 5:13b and 5:14 is Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 329-33. Among writers who see less significance in the adversative and tend not to see a contrast between 5:13b and 5:14, see C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (2 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 1:282-83; N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (New Interpreter’s Bible 10; Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 527; and T. L. Carter, Paul and the Power of Sin: Redefining ‘Beyond the Pale’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 172-73.
10. For helpful comment on the parallel use of παράβασις in 4:15 and 5:14, and how Paul thereby describes Israel and Adam as both under law, see Chris A. Vlachos, The Law and the Knowledge of Good and Evil: The Edenic Background of the Catalytic Operation of the Law in Paul (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009), 114.
11. Among many writers seeing this or a similar Israel-Adam analogy in Rom 5:13-14, see Otfried Hofius, “Adam-Christ Antithesis and the Law: Reflections on Romans 5:12-21,” in Paul and the Mosaic Law (ed. James D. G. Dunn; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 195-96; Wright, Romans, 527; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 418; and Vlachos, The Law, 116.
12. Similar questions are raised by some authors who use this apparent conflict as evidence of the tension or even contradiction within Paul’s thought; e.g., see Hans Hübner, Law in Paul’s Thought (New York: T&T Clark, 1984), 81; and especially Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 145-47. Readers may note that I grant that Paul refers to natural revelation not only in Rom 1 but also in 2:14-15, though I recognize that this has been disputed by a number of recent commentators.
13. As argued, e.g., by Poirier, “Romans 5:13-14.”
14. Along similar lines is Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 424-25. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word, 1988), 275, also helpfully notes that Paul is making a different point here from his argument in Rom 1-2 concerning the universality of law; Dunn, however, does not see the emphasis upon Adam as corporate representative along the lines that I have argued above.
15. Among writers who defend parallel references to Adam and Israel in these verses, many of whom use the very language of “recapitulation,” see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 98-100; N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 197; Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 31; Wright, Romans, 553, 562-63; Dennis E. Johnson, “The Function of Romans 7:13-25 in Paul’s Argument for the Law’s Impotence and the Spirit’s Power, and Its Bearing on the Identity of the Schizophrenic ‘I,’” in Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology in Service of the Church: Essays in Honor of Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (ed. Lane G. Tipton and Jeffrey C. Waddington; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2008), 31-36; and Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (trans. John Richard de Witt; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 143-44.
16. One suggestion is that Paul uses the rhetorical technique of impersonation, or prosopopoeia, which involves the assumption of a role. See Ben Witherington III, with Darlene Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 179-89. Witherington argues that Paul is impersonating Adam.
17. Writers believing that Paul refers to Israel in these verses include Moo, Romans, 428-29; Fitzmyer, Romans, 462-65; Paul W. Meyer, “The Worm at the Core of the Apple: Exegetical Reflections on Romans 7,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa; Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 75. Among writers defending a reference to Adam, see Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 179-89; and Carter, Paul and the Power of Sin, 186-87. L. Ann Jervis, “‘The Commandment Which is for Life’ (Romans 7.10): Sin’s Use of the Obedience of Faith,” JSNT 27 (2004), 214, strongly rejects seeing a reference to Adam. A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), ch. 5, argues that the “I” of ch. 7 refers to neither Adam nor Israel but to a Gentile confronted by the Mosaic law.
18. That the prohibition against coveting was viewed as a summation of the entire law, and that Adam and Eve committed this sin, was a popular opinion in early Jewish exegesis; see Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 98-99; and Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 188-89.
19. Wright, Romans, 550.
20. Cranfield, Romans, 352, comments: “In LXX Gen 3.13 the woman says . . . ηπατησεν . . . , but the compound verb εχαπαταν, which is used here, is also used by Paul in 2 Cor II.3 (cf. I Tim 2.14), where he is quite definitely echoing Gen 3.13.”
21. Wright, Climax, 228-29.
22. The Two-Adams paradigm also likely lurks behind a number of other Pauline texts. A good candidate is Gal 4:4-5, where Paul describes Christ as “born of a woman,” a likely allusion to the proto-Messianic promise of Gen 3:15. If Paul is indeed making this allusion, then it is noteworthy that Paul here also discusses the Mosaic law when he is thinking in Two-Adams terms. In Gal 4:4-5 “under the law” represents the (Adamic) condition from which human beings need to be redeemed, and which Christ endured in order to release his people from it. Among commentators who see Paul’s Two-Adams theology at work in Gal 4:4-5, though do not draw all of the same conclusions about it as I do, see James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993), 215-16; and Don Garlington, An Exposition of Galatians: A New Perspective/Reformational Reading (2d ed.; Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 194.
23. For helpful remarks on this point, see Hofius, “Adam-Christ Antithesis,” 170.
24. For arguments that this refers to the law truly bringing about an increase in sin, see Thomas R. Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 73-74. For further discussion on the negative role of the law expressed here, see also Wright, Romans, 530; and Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 146.
25. See Wright, Romans, 524-29, 529-30; and Wright, Climax, 39.
26. Scroggs, The Last Adam, 82. For similar comments, see, e.g., Dunn, Romans 1-8, 286; Carter, Paul and the Power of Sin, 174; and Frank Thielman, Paul and the Law: A Contextual Approach (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994), 192.
27. Commentators are divided on whether “came in” (παρεισῆλθεν) is simply a neutral term, meaning something like “was added,” or carries negative connotations. For a defense of the former, see Hofius, “Adam-Christ Antithesis,” 198-99; for a defense of the latter, see Moo, Romans, 346-47.
28. A recent writer taking this view is Carter, Paul and the Power of Sin, 79.
29. Some interpreters do not believe that Paul is referring to the Mosaic law in 15:56. Vlachos, e.g., believes that Paul refers to law in general, “law qua law”; see The Law, 75-79. Hollander and Holleman argue that Paul is not thinking in terms of Judaism or the Mosaic law but adopts the ideas of Philo and many Hellenistic philosophers who viewed human laws as a feature of the degeneration of humanity; see H. W. Hollander and J. Holleman, “The Relationship of Death, Sin, and Law in 1 Cor 15:56,” NovT 35 (1993): 270-91. The fact that Paul has spoken of the Mosaic law with negative overtones in 7:19 and 9:20 and the fact that the statements in Rom 5 and 7, similar to 1 Cor 15:56, speak explicitly of the Mosaic law and not simply of law(s) in general, suggest that in 15:56 Paul has the Mosaic law at least primarily in mind.
30. See the helpful comments in Thielman, Paul and the Law, 106-8.
31. Fitzmyer helpfully comments that 15:56 explains what Paul presupposes in 15:20-28; see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 607. The most thorough study to date on the importance of the Two-Adams material earlier in 1 Cor 15 for understanding 15:56 is Vlachos, The Law.
32. I take “works of the law” as a reference to the Mosaic law as a whole. For defense of this position, see, e.g., Moisés Silva, “Faith Versus Works of the Law in Galatians,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 2: The Paradoxes of Paul (ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 221-22; Moo, Romans, 206-10; A. Andrew Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001), ch.7; C. Marvin Pate, The Reverse of the Curse: Paul, Wisdom, and the Law (WUNT 2/114; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 194-99; and In-Gyu Hong, The Law in Galatians (JSNTSup 81; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), 134-35.
33. For arguments that Paul is indeed presuming the premise of sinful inability, and hence that he teaches the requirement of perfect obedience, see, e.g., Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant, ch. 6; Seyoon Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), ch. 4; Bryan D. Estelle, “The Covenant of Works in Moses and Paul,” in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (ed. R. Scott Clark; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007), 124-33; Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment, 44-49; and Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (Dallas: Word, 1990), 118. Other recent commentators reject the claim that Paul teaches perfect obedience here; e.g., see J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 309-11; Richard B. Hays, The Letter to the Galatians: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections (New Interpreter’s Bible 11; Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 247; and Dunn, Galatians, 171.
34. For arguments that Paul intends to make a sharp contrast between Lev 18:5 and Hab 2:4 in Gal 3:11-12, see, e.g., Jason C. Meyer, The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2009), 161, 217; Martyn, Galatians, 332-33; and Longenecker, Galatians, 119. That Paul makes a similar contrast between Lev 18:5 and Deut 30:14 in Rom 10:5-8, see Guy P. Waters, “Romans 10:5 and the Covenant of Works,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 210-39; and Meyer, The End of the Law, 224-25. Despite the antithetical language that Paul uses, some do argue that he sees a fundamental harmony between Lev 18:5 and Hab 2:4; see, e.g., Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 152-53; Dunn, Galatians, 175-76; and Garlington, Galatians, 161-63. Garlington acknowledges that 3:12 “poses a problem” for his understanding.
35. For an extended argument that Paul teaches the law’s demand for perfect obedience in Gal 5:3, see S. M. Baugh, “Galatians 5:1-6 and Personal Obligation: Reflections on Paul and the Law,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 259-80; see also Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 260-61; and Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment, 63-64. Among writers arguing instead that Paul simply holds out the task of fulfilling the law as a never-ending process or a total way of life, see Martyn, Galatians, 470-71; Garlington, Galatians, 238-39; Hays, Galatians, 312; and Dunn, Galatians, 266.
36. Two prominent examples are Herman Ridderbos and John Murray. See, e.g., Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), 123-25; Ridderbos, Paul, 134-42, 153-58; and John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 2:50-51, 249-51. The legalistic misinterpretation idea is also common in Cranfield’s Romans commentary, which is sometimes regarded as a standard Reformed exposition of this epistle. Räisänen, with a fair bit of justification, dismisses Cranfield’s frequent recourse to the misinterpretation idea as “an eloquent bit of special pleading.” See Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 43.
37. For a more expanded argument, along the same lines as my own, see Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New, 330-33.
38. Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 149.
39. Ibid., 152.
40. John Murray, “The Adamic Administration,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 50. Murray includes no citations to indicate whom he has in mind. It seems quite unfair, historically, to accuse proponents of a republication idea of failing to assess the uniqueness of the Adamic administration, given their detailed explanations of the many crucial differences between the covenants of works and grace, in the context of discussing the Mosaic covenant. See, e.g., Thomas Boston’s notes in Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d.), 53-59.
41. Murray, Romans, 1:207-8.
42. At the risk of overemphasizing the obvious, but ever wary of being mischaracterized, I note again that such a “repetition of the . . . covenant of works” cannot be understood as a viable alternative way of attaining eternal life, that is, as a repetition of the covenant of works simpliciter. Murray could not have meant it in this way, unless he was grossly mischaracterizing the idea, since he refers to a view “current among Reformed theologians,” and Reformed theologians have never seen the Adamic covenant republished in the Mosaic covenant in this way.
43. Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant,” 96-98.
44. Though Venema sees a problem here with The Law Is Not of Faith generally, my essay is his prime evidence. He states that I am compelled “to argue that believers are not governed by the moral law in their relations with others within the spiritual kingdom.” See “The Mosaic Covenant,” 100-101; see also 55, 96-98. I do not argue this and this has never been my view. Venema supports his claim only by substituting “moral law” in places I wrote “natural law.” Making some subtle distinctions between the moral law and the natural law was one of the main purposes of my essay. Though it is evident in hindsight that I should have been all the more explicit, readers may compare Venema’s interpretation of my essay with my essay itself, especially in light of statements such as the following, on the very page Venema cites as proof of his claims about me: “But insofar as they are called out of the world into the kingdom of Christ, Christians do not operate according to the natural law (though their basic moral obligations remain the same). . . .” See David VanDrunen, “Natural Law and the Works Principle under Adam and Moses,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 313; see generally 283-314.
45. John Murray, The Covenant of Grace: A Biblico-Theological Study (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1953), 22; and Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 200.
46. Suspicion that Heb 3:7-19 might offer counter-evidence is unfounded. Consistent with the claims I make here, Heb 3 indicates that the experience of physical death of corporate Israel in the wilderness illustrates the eschatological death that will come upon individuals under the new covenant who reject Christ. Hence corporate Israel’s experience under the law displays the Adamic state of people who fall away from the new covenant.
47. Daniel might be an interesting case study. He was a paragon of OT godliness and seemed untroubled by doubts about his own salvation. Yet his prayer in Dan 9 indicates that he fully identified with corporate Israel in her shameful rebellion against God and the just punishment against her according to the Mosaic law, and he prayed for that new initiative of God’s grace promised already in Deuteronomy for just such an exilic predicament. Daniel’s experience was manifestly different from that of any new covenant believer, due to their diverse locations in the historia salutis, yet Daniel does not seem to be existentially baffled by his situation. My thanks to Dennis Johnson for suggesting this example.
48. E.g., see Murray, Romans, 1:228-29, 239.
49. A number of interpreters note that Paul, in texts such as those I cite, is referring first and foremost to the Mosaic law, as given by God, yet with a universal application in view. See, e.g., Moo, Romans, 387-88, 416-17; Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant, 227-28; Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 164; and Fitzmyer, Romans, 447. Needless to say, these commentators do not share all of my soteriological convictions.
50. Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant,” 91.