The Last Adam

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

(Gen 1:26-28)

7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature…17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

(Gen 2:7,17).

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

    and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you,

    ‘You shall not eat of it,’

cursed is the ground because of you;

    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

    and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face

    you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

    for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

    and to dust you shall return.”

(Gen 3:17-19)

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

    and the son of man that you care for him?

5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

    and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

    you have put all things under his feet,

7 all sheep and oxen,

    and also the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

(Ps 8:3-8)

21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

(1 Cor 15:21-28,45-49)

1 Cor 15:24-28 is a popular prooftext for anti-Trinitarians. They quote it to prove the essential subordination of the Son. However, that rips the passage out of context.

In 1 Cor 15, Paul’s discussion is governed by his two-Adams scheme. That’s explicit in vv21-22 as well as vv45-49. And notice how v24 picks right up from v22, via the transitional verse (23).

But over and above that, the two-Adams scheme is implicit in vv24-28, where the discussion is undergirded by reference to Ps 8. Ps 8:5-8 is an interpretive paraphrase of Gen 1:26-28, concerning the creation and dominion of original humanity.

Paul uses the two-Adams scheme to compare and contrast the respective roles of Adam and Christ. That’s the operative framework in 1 Cor 15.

The first Adam was subject to God, as God’s earthly viceroy, but insubordinate. In reversing the Fall, Christ, in his economic role as the last Adam, and the eschatological viceroy, will be subject to God–in contrast to the disobedient first Adam.

So this is not referring to the ontological status of the Son. The Son of God is not an Adamic representative by nature, but by Incarnation and mission. He assumes that office.

The filial subordination in v 28 is economic subordination, which figures in his Adamic role, as the Second Man. It does not and cannot refer to the Son in himself, for the Son qua Son isn’t Adamic–either naturally or federally. Hence, Paul isn’t discussing the status of the Son absolutely, but giving the reader a narrowly-drawn comparison between rebellious Adam and his eschatological counterpart.