Romans 5:12-26

As you would have heard if you were there on Sunday, I tend to go with Henri Blocher’s understanding of Romans 5:12-14. The problem is the relationship between the “one man’s sin” and the fact that “all sinned.” Does this mean:

1) That all people actually end up sinning just like Adam did? We sin like Adam.

2) That all people sinned and are guilt because of what Adam did? We sinned in Adam.

The first, though true (Romans 3:23), seems to say less that what Paul is saying here.

The second, which is the traditional Augustinian view, makes better sense of the text, though raises problems like how someone can be held guilty for something someone else did.

Blocher, without rejecting the truth of 1) or 2) argues that what Romans 5:12-14 is saying is that,

3) Through Adam, God reckons our rebellion as sin (=breaking God’s law), even when we do not break a specific law of God known to us.

Perhaps the best way to get Blocher’s understanding across is to quote his paraphrase:

Just as through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, and the sin-death connection was established, and so death could be inflicted on all as the penalty of their sin…
For take the period from Adam to Moses: sin was in the world, yet sin is not imputed in the absence of law, when it is view independently; nevertheless it was imputed through the relationship of all to Adam, and so death reigned even over people who had not sinned, as Adam had done, by violating a precept directly given to them. Adam’s role as a racial head for condemnation makes him a type of Christ, the Head for justification.

Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, 1997, 78.