...My response to Kevin DeYoung's Ten Reasons to Believe in a Historical Adam.
Here's a little teaser:
(DeYoung) 10. Without a historical Adam, Paul’s doctrine of the second Adam does not hold together.
While doubtless Paul did believe in the historicity of Adam, this belief is really not relevant to the way he uses the Adam-story in Romans 5 or even to the theological point he is making. Stated in a slightly different way: if it turns out that Paul was mistaken to believe that Adam really existed, why would it matter?
Regardless of historicity or even Paul's assumption of it, his use of the Adam-story is metaphorical and typological, akin to the way the author of the Book of Hebrews employs the figure of Melchizedek in Hebrews 7. Even assuming that Melchizedek was a historical person, are we really compelled to believe that he is "without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life" (Heb. 7:3)? Or, rather, is the story of Abraham's encounter with the shadowy figure of Melchizedek in Genesis 14 a fitting type or metaphor to illustrate a theological truth about Christ's eternal priesthood?
[To be developed and continued...]
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