The Pauline Doctrine of the Second Adam

Abstract

In his recent important book, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, Professor W. D. Davies, discussing St. Paul's doctrine of the Second Adam, writes: ‘Probably … this conception played a far more important part in his thought than the scanty references to the Second Adam in I Corinthians and Romans would lead us to suppose.’2 A similar importance has been attached to the idea by Dr A. J. Rawlinson in his New Testament Doctrine of the Christ; it has provided Paul with some of his most characteristic Christology. It has also been claimed more than once that the Second Adam is St. Paul's substitute for the Gospel Son of Man, while both have been traced to a widely spread myth of the Urmensch, or primeval Man, the origins of which are obscure, but which was revived in the Gnostic Anthropos.