p. 120 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, February 4, 1868

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 8

WAS ADAM A TYPE?

Seventh-day Adventists have held the view, founded in the very nature of things, as well as sustained by revelation, that no type of anything connected with the work of redemption, could have existed before the fall. The Sabbath was instituted before that event, hence the Sabbath is not a type. There is no argument which can be framed to show the Sabbath to be typical in its nature, which is not at once and completely demolished by this fundamental principle that all types date their commencement this side of the expulsion of man from Paradise.

Some with a strange pertinacity cling to the idea that the Sabbath is a type. Why they should do so, we are unable to discern, since if it is a type, it must continue till the antitype is reached, which, upon their own showing, is yet future. But in order to sustain their position that the Sabbath is a type, their first work must, as a matter of course, be to disprove the proposition above laid down, and show that types could or did exist before the fall.

One of our opponents, in a work against the Sabbath, of far greater bulk than merit, thinks he can do this, and refers to Rom. v, 14, as proof. As this is the only text that has ever been urged for this purpose we will look at it. The text reads as follows: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure [Gr. τυπος, type] of him who was to come.” “This,” exclaims the objector, in great buoyancy of spirit, “proves that Adam was a type of Christ, notwithstanding the universal and unqualified denial to the contrary; and how could all types originate this side the fall, if Adam was a type of Christ.”

There is but little danger of going astray here, if a person will keep his mind on the true question at issue. That question is, was Adam a type of Christ, before his fall? Let us go back in imagination for a moment to that happy period. Man stands forth in his innocence and uprightness, untainted with sin, unafflicted with evil, and with unrestricted access to the tree of life. He needs nothing more but to remain in perfect obedience, until the period of his probation, whatever that may be, is accomplished, and his happy state thus become unalterably fixed. In that state was he a type of Christ? If any one is inclined to think he was, let us suppose that he never had fallen! Then no Christ would ever have come; for no redemption would ever have been needed. Then what becomes of the type? Thus we see that so long as Adam maintained his uprightness, he could not possibly be a type of a coming Saviour.

It is the fall which has wrought the mighty change that we now see, from the original holy and happy Edenic state. It is that which has changed man’s relation to God, and made new institutions on the part of God, appropriate, if not necessary. When man had fallen, and redemption became necessary, and God had promised it, then types and figures of that work became appropriate. Before the fall, they would have been a source of gloom and despair; since then, they are a source of encouragement and hope. Before that they would have been sad reminders of coming sin, wretchedness and ruin; since that they are bright promises of coming glory.

Now, since the Edenic state, with all its blessings, has come to an end, through sin, and a divine being has come in to restore the obedient members of our revolted race back to that blessed state, Adam in his unfallen condition may now be taken to represent that which he did not and could not do before his fall. Hence, the careful reader will mark the phraseology which the apostle uses: Who is [not was] a figure of him that was to come. He is now; he was not then. Adam was the representative of the race; and unless we say that God designed that he should fall, he was, in the purpose of God, the father of an immortal race of beings, that mortality to be derived from obedience alone to the divine will. But this position the first Adam lost; and now he becomes a figure of the second Adam, who steps in to complete the work in which the first failed. Thus the only text in all the Bible which can possibly be pressed into the service of showing that any type existed before the fall, entirely fails to accomplish the purpose of the objector.