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Kierkegaard’s Complaint: Putting Adam ‘Fantastically Outside’ of History

Jay Johnson February 22, 2020


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Was Adam directly created from dust and placed in a sinless, deathless paradise? If so, how does he represent me before God? What does a perfect man in a perfect environment have in common with anyone?

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Our focus in this episode is original sin and the Fall, which we’ll view through the eyes of an often-neglected source, Soren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard is most famous for his concept of the “leap of faith.” The phrase is often taken to mean that Christians believe in God without evidence, but that’s a misunderstanding. In Kierkegaard’s thought, “the leap is the category of decision.” Faith, for Kierkegaard, is much more than intellectual agreement with Christian doctrine. He regards faith as a passionate commitment to follow Christ, despite the paradox of the incarnation and the affront of the crucifixion. Only from that lived experience do we discover true knowledge of God. In the language of common sense, the proof is in the pudding.

What’s less well known about Kierkegaard is that he also viewed original sin as a “leap,” for it too belongs to the category of decision. In The Concept of Anxiety, he explored the question of whether original sin is identical to “the first sin, Adam’s sin, the Fall.” [1] His interest was not the bare fact that “sin came into existence, but how it can come into existence.” In other words, why would Adam and Eve sin? What could possibly motivate them to transgress?

A friend recently related a story about reading a picture Bible to his 6-year-old daughter, and after Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden for eating the fruit, she blurted out, “I just wish Adam and Eve hadn’t done that.” Kierkegaard refused to accept her verdict. It minimizes our own guilt, and it divorces Adam and Eve from the rest of humanity.

In the first paragraph of his treatise, Kierkegaard complains that traditional conceptions of original sin introduce “a fantastic assumption, a state which by its loss involved the Fall.” What was that state? Most of us have heard it from childhood: Adam and Eve were created perfect and lived in a sinless, deathless paradise. Everyone agrees that such a situation doesn’t exist today, but as Kierkegaard pointed out, the theologians “forgot that the doubt was a different one, namely, whether it ever had existed — and that was pretty clearly necessary if one were to lose it. The history of humanity acquired a fantastic beginning. Adam was fantastically put outside. Pious sentiment and fantasy got what it desired — a godly prelude — but thought got nothing.”

The history of humanity acquired a fantastic beginning. Adam was fantastically put outside. Pious sentiment and fantasy got what it desired — a godly prelude — but thought got nothing.

Soren Kierkegaard

Consider the fantastic ways literal Adam has been portrayed. The prominent Young-Earth Creationist Ken Ham says the garden was perfect, without thorns or thistles, and Adam’s work there was “pure joy.” Moreover, Adam didn’t have to learn to speak, and he had no trouble remembering all the names he gave the animals, since he was “much more intelligent than we are.” Ham claims Adam possessed every talent possible rolled into one person. Adam was a brilliant artist, a musical prodigy, and a mathematical genius with a photographic memory. [2]

From the other end of the spectrum, Catholic theologians have heaped even greater superlatives on Adam’s head. Writing on the Thomistic Evolution website, Rev. Nicanor Austriaco says God “created all things flawless,” and our original parents were “established in friendship with their Creator and in harmony within themselves and with each other and with creation around them.” Besides this “original state of harmony,” Adam and Eve also received sanctifying grace that justified them and made them righteous. To that list, Thomas Aquinas adds three more gifts to “perfect them by remedying their natural weaknesses” — immortality, integrity, and infused knowledge. On top of that, St. Thomas declares that Adam and Eve were impassable, meaning they couldn’t experience suffering or pain. Taking human evolution into account, Rev. Austriaco adds even more gifts to counter the effects of common descent: the strength to resist infidelity, violence, and false knowledge.

At this point, Kierkegaard’s complaint that human history has acquired a “fantastic beginning” appears an understatement. Adam is a superhero straight out of the Marvel Universe. Covenant Theology fared no better in Kierkegaard’s opinion, having “lost itself dramatically in an imaginary notion” of Adam acting as all of humanity’s designated representative.

Adam is a superhero straight out of the Marvel Universe.

Both Catholic and Protestant explanations “explain nothing,” since neither explains why Adam sinned, nor the connection between Adam’s first sin and original sin. “Therefore,” Kierkegaard concluded, “every effort to explain Adam’s significance as head of the human race by nature, generation, or covenant … confuses everything.” If Adam is qualitatively different from the rest of humanity, he loses all connection to us. He is “fantastically outside” both history and normal human experience. Thus, he can’t represent us, and his sin becomes inexplicable. What rescues the situation is the realization that Adam, as the first human, “is at once himself and the race.”

Kierkegaard doesn’t interpret ha’adam as an archetype, as I do, but his overall concept matches my understanding. In his view, “as Adam lost innocence by guilt, so does every person lose it.” Thus, we shouldn’t say that by “Adam’s first sin, sin came into the world,” but “by his first sin, sinfulness came into Adam,” which is exactly what happens to all of us. We bear as much responsibility for original sin as Adam and Eve. Every individual’s first sin “brings sinfulness into the world.” As one scholar put it, “Their story is the paradigm for the narrative of every individual’s development.” [3]

While much more could be said about The Concept of Anxiety, I want to focus on Kierkegaard’s insight that a literal Adam falls “fantastically outside” of history.

Recall the perfection of Adam and the flawless paradise where he lived. Has anyone ever experienced something remotely comparable? The literal interpretation immediately removes Adam from any semblance of normal human experience. Then, as an encore, we are told that Adam’s first sin resulted in fatal consequences for all of humanity, even though his first sin was completely unlike the first sin of everyone else who has ever lived. For everyone else, our first sin was not only a leap, it was a leap we were predisposed to make by the sinfulness that surrounds us. Only Adam’s sin was different, in literal explanations.

Adam still has nothing in common with us, either in our humanity or our experience of life, yet somehow the bill for his first sin was put on our tab.

Thus doubly insulated from any contact with personal or human history, Adam has remained a mystery wrapped in an enigma. And even when theologians try to resolve the problem by demoting him from our genetic father to our designated hitter — sorry, designated representative — the riddle remains. Adam still has nothing in common with us, either in our humanity or our experience of life, yet somehow the bill for his first sin was put on our tab. Rebelling against that thought, Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg exclaimed, “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”

Which introduces the question: If Christ, the second Adam, “had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect” to represent us before God, as Hebrews 2:17 asserts, shouldn’t the first Adam bear at least some resemblance to us to represent us before God? The answer, of course, must be “Yes!”

The Scripture portrays a three-way symmetry between Adam, Christ, and the individual. But the debate within the church about evolution has focused so intensely on Paul’s use of Adam/Christ typology in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that people have forgotten the third node of the triangle — the individual person. In the passages just mentioned, Paul metaphorically contrasts Adam and Christ, but the debate about “historical Adam” has created a blind spot where the individual is concerned. Specifically, passages such as Gal. 4:3-5, Phil. 2:5-8, and Heb. 2:10-18 delineate the relationship between Christ and the individual, which is the prototype for any reasonable understanding of how Adam relates to us.

Galatians 4:3-5 — But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

Philippians 2:5-7 — Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

Hebrews 2:10-11 — It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters …

Traditionally, Christians have understood Romans 5 as requiring a literal man named Adam to maintain the balance of Paul’s metaphor. One Christ, One Adam, and all of humanity is related to one or the other, by choice or inheritance. Yet, in those passages that express Jesus’ relation to the individual, the emphasis is on our shared humanity, our shared experience, our shared suffering. Jesus had “to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect” to represent us before God.

If the parallel between Christ and the individual is that close – to the extent that Christ had to be made like us in every way — then the same dynamic should hold true for the other two sides of the triangle — the relationships between Jesus/Adam, and Adam/the Individual. This becomes even clearer in Federal Theology, which theorizes that Adam was appointed by God to represent everyone. If Adam’s sin has been charged to our account because he represented all of humanity when he sinned, then Adam, like Jesus, necessarily must be “like his brothers and sisters in every respect” to represent us fairly. Otherwise, why am I condemned for his sin?

Let’s apply this test to the literal Adam and see whether the symmetry holds. I’ll begin, as I should, with Jesus.

Jesus was born of woman and raised in poverty in a village that was a byword for “backwater.” He grew up in a large family, attended synagogue, and learned a trade. His father died early, and Jesus worked to support his mother and siblings. Along the way, he was constantly exposed to the everyday examples of good and evil that all of us witness from cradle to grave. Everyone alive can identify with Jesus. He had no advantages over anyone. Like the rest of us, he had to learn the lessons of life and “grow in wisdom and understanding” as he matured (Luke 2:52).

Contrast Jesus’ experience with the literal Adam, whom some theologians postulate as a non-negotiable belief of Christian orthodoxy. The specially-created Adam grew up an only child in a perfect environment. He never heard his parents argue. He never fought with a sibling. And this man is my representative? The perfect Adam was never mocked or despised. He never suffered the pain of rejection or desired revenge. This Adam was endowed with all knowledge. He never had to sweat over a difficult task or struggle to learn a new skill. Everything the de novo Adam ever wanted or needed was right there, within arm’s reach. He never experienced hunger, disease, or the loss of a loved one. Tell me again: How does this man represent me, or anyone else who’s ever lived?

More importantly, how does this literal Adam bear any resemblance to Jesus? Everyone can identify with Jesus. He had no earthly advantages over you or me or anyone else — no power, no wealth, no prominent family, “no beauty that we should desire.” By the same measure, what, if anything, does the specially-created man named Adam have in common with me, other than the singular fact that he sinned?

The specially-created Adam grew up an only child in a perfect environment. He never heard his parents argue. He never fought with a sibling. And this man is my representative?

If ha’adam, “the man” of Genesis, is to have any meaning for Christians today, he must be an archetype, capable of representing the universal experience of humanity and the individual. Only then is the three-way symmetry between ha’adam, Jesus, and every person resolved in perfect harmony. The Scriptural triad has meaning only if Jesus Christ relates to the individual exactly as ha’adam relates to the individual, and ha’adam relates to the individual exactly as he relates to Jesus. Therefore, ha’adam had to be born of woman, raised in a typical family, exposed to both good and evil, etc. — just like the Redeemer, just like you and me. “The man” of Genesis only makes sense as an archetypal symbol. Otherwise, Adam ceases to have any significance, for he ceases to have anything in common with the humanity and life experience of Jesus, of you, and of me.

The literal individual named “Adam” fails every test imaginable. He has nothing in common with anyone living or dead, to say nothing of history, science, or common sense. The only thing literal Adam has going for him is tradition, and a one-legged stool amounts to no stool at all.


[1] There’s no adequate English word to translate Kierkegaard’s Danish angst. More recent translators use “anxiety,” while earlier ones preferred “dread.” All quotes are from the 1957 edition of Walter Lowrie’s translation available at https://archive.org/details/TheConceptOfDread/mode/1up. Whenever possible, I have updated the language to current useage (e.g. “person” for “man,” “humanity” for “race”).

[2] Ken Ham, “What Was Adam Like?” https://answersingenesis.org/adam-and-eve/what-was-adam-like/ According to the website, the article was revised and adapted from Creation 13, no 4 (September 1991): 28-31; last featured November 26, 2019. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020.

[3] John J. Davenport, “‘Entangled Freedom’: Ethical Authority, Original Sin, and Choice in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety,” Kierkegaardiana 21 (2000).

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Author

Jay Johnson

Jay Johnson spent 15 years as a journalist and publishing executive before embarking on a second career teaching English in the juvenile justice system. Jay’s love of kids and education took him to BioLogos in 2016 to research the connection between evolution, Young Earth Creationism, and the alarming loss of faith among the younger generation. Jay lives in New Mexico with his wife, Sue’llen, and a black German Shepherd named Luca.

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