Now it is crucial
that we understand the first proffered explanation of our solidarity with Adam (sinning
in and with Adam) in fact does nothing to explain why people consistently sin,
for imputation is purely a legal or forensic notion that has no effect whatever
on a person’s moral character. Moo later explains, “Paul is insisting
that people were really ‘made’ sinners through Adam’s act of disobedience just as
they are really ‘made righteous’ through Christ’s obedience. But this ‘making
righteous’ . . . means not to become ‘morally righteous’ people but to become ‘judicially
righteous’—to be judged acquitted, cleared of all charges” (Moo, Romans,
372. The proper legal notion here is not acquittal but rather pardon. God’s
guilty verdict is not overturned, as through there had been a miscarriage of
justice; rather, we are graciously given a divine pardon for our crimes). Similarly,
“people can be ‘made’ sinners in the sense that God considers them to be such
by regarding Adam’s act as, at the same time, their act. . . . IT seems fair,
then, . . . to speak of imputation here.” So “we are dealing with a real, though
forensic, situation: people actually become sinners in solidarity with Christ—again,
by God’s decision” (Moo, Romans, 372). Such forensic transactions
cannot explain why people consistently turn from good to evil. Just as the
pardon of a condemned criminal does not make him suddenly a virtuous person but
simply no longer legally guilty, so also the imputation of legal guilt does not
transform the moral character of an otherwise blameless person. . . . Moo’s
argument in favour of imputation depends on reading v. 12 in light of vv.
18-19. Moo acknowledges that his interpretation “rests almost entirely in the
juxtaposition of v. 12 with vv. 18-19” (Moo, Romans, 354). But that understates
the situation; rather, his interpretation rests almost entirely, as he
initially stated, on reading v. 12 “in light of vv. 18-19.” But that
seems to stand things on their head; vv. 18-19, which complete the original
sentence interrupted after v. 12d, ought more naturally to be read in light of
v. 12. In that way, Paul does not need to take back, as it were, something he
has already said; rather, he stands by it. Paul says that just as Adam’s sin was
followed by death, so “death spread to all men because all men sinned.” Most
commentators construe eph hō as a causal conjunction, “because,” and
take “all men sinned” to refer to people’s own individual acts of sin. So Adam
was the floodgate through which sin and death entered the world, and death then
spread to all men because each one sinned in his own turn. (Paul does not here
address the question why, though one recalls his remarks in 1:20-23.) When Paul
affirms that “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,” that “one man’s
trespass led to condemnation for all men,” that “because of one man’s trespass,
death reigned through that one man,” and that “many died through one man’s
trespass,” he may be understood to trace all sinning and, hence, condemnation
and death back to Adam’s initial transgression, through which sin entered the
world. That Adam is singled out instead of Eve is as plausibly an expression of
Jewish patriarchy (she was, after all, Adam’s “helper”) as an affirmation of
Adam’s federal headship of the human race.
Scholars who, like
Moo, find in 4 Ezra 7.118 an anticipation of the doctrine of the
imputation of Adam’s sin to all men typically fail to quote the verse in context:
I answered and said, “This
is my first and last word: It would have been better if the earth had not
produced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, had restrained him from
sinning. For what good is it to all that they live in sorrow now and expect
punishment after death? O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who
sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants.
For what good is it to us, if an eternal age has been promised to us, but we
have done deeds that bring death? And what good is that an everlasting hope has
been promised us, but we have miserably failed? Or that safe and healthful
habitations have been reserved for us, but we have lived wickedly? Or that the
glory of the Most High will defend those who have led a pure life, but we have
walked in the most wicked ways? Or that a paradise shall be revealed, whose
fruit remains unspoiled and in which are abundance and healing, but we shall not
enter it, because we have lived in unseemly places? Or that the faces of those
who practiced self-control shall shine more than the stars but our faces shall
be blacker than darkness? For while we lived and committed iniquity we did not
consider what we should suffer after death.”
He answered and said,
“This is the meaning of the context which every man who is born on earth shall
wage, that if he is defeated he shall suffer what you have said, but if he is
victorious he shall receive what I have said.” (4 Ezra 7.116-29)
The text actually expresses
beautifully the balance between Ada’s failure and people’s responsibility for their
own acts of sin, just as we find in Rom 5:12: “as sin came into the world
through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because
all men sinned” (It is worth noting that despite espousing a view like Moo’s,
Fitzmyer denies that there is any clear reference in pre-Christian Jewish literature
to such a notion as the incorporation of all human beings in Adam [Romans,
412]. Similarly, Dunn thinks that the concept of corporate personality is more
of a hindrance than a help here [Romans 1-8, 272). (William Lane Craig, In
Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021], 230, 232-33, emphasis in bold added)