Adam
Typological treatment in the corpus
Adam, the first man, is identified by Warnock, Jones, and Nee-Lee as a type of Christ as the Last Adam and Second Man. Where the first Adam was the source of mortality and ruin, Christ as Last Adam depicts the beginning of a new creation — the one who, as life-giving Spirit, leads humanity toward the full likeness of God.
Biblical anchoring
| Reference | Context |
|---|---|
| Gen. 1:26-27 | Adam created in the image (tselem) and likeness (demuth) of God |
| Gen. 2:7 | God breathes the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils: he becomes a living soul |
| Gen. 2:21-22 | God causes deep sleep to fall upon Adam; takes rib, builds Eve |
| Gen. 3:17-19 | Adam brings curse, mortality, and bondage upon the earth |
| Rom. 5:12-19 | Pauline Adam–Christ parallel: death through one, justification through one |
| 1Cor. 15:45-49 | Adam = living soul; Christ = life-giving Spirit; first and last Adam |
| 1Cor. 15:22 | ”For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” |
Typological interpretation per author
Warnock
Warnock formulates the Adam–Christ type within his overarching typological hermeneutic: the natural comes first, then the spiritual (1Cor. 15:46). This hermeneutical principle anchors his reading of Scripture in a discernible order. From this principle he draws the line:
First Adam, then the Last Adam. First the Passover, then the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.1
This sequence is not historical accident but deliberate typological architecture. The type–antitype schema is for Warnock not merely conceptual but decisive for understanding Christ’s work. The first Adam is not his counterpart but his forerunner, whose character and fate prepare for Christ’s coming:
from the first Adam there came Christ, destined not only to become the Last Adam (the last of Adam, the last of the old race), but the Second Man (the beginning of the second creation).2
This is no mere theological speculation, but a concrete redemptive-historical transformation. Warnock asserts here that Christ is not simply a substitute for Adam’s sin, but a complete refashioning of humanity itself. After the resurrection, the antitypical parallel becomes visible: just as God in the beginning breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils (Gen. 2:7), infusing Adam’s life with divine vitality, so the Last Adam breathes spiritual life into his disciples:
the Last Adam (who had now become, by virtue of His death and resurrection, a ‘life-giving Spirit’—1Cor. 15:45)—so now the Last Adam breathed into the disciples the breath of spiritual life, and they passed experientially from death unto life.3
Here Warnock touches a crucial theme: the believer experiences the reality of Christ’s resurrection not merely intellectually, but vitally — through direct participation in the breath-given life of the Spirit. This is the evidence that Christ has truly inaugurated the Second Creation. For Warnock, identification with the Last Adam is moreover normative for the believer — conformity to Christ is conformity to the Second Man himself, to the renewed humanity that Christ embodies:
So thorough and real and vital is our identification with the Last Adam, that in all respects—His work, His ministry, His death, His life—we are to become like unto Him.4
Jones
Jones develops the Second Adam type systematically via the Pauline imputation doctrine in Rom. 5. This is a juridical-theological model that differs radically from later understandings of original sin. The type–antitype schema turns on what Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteousness each impute to “all men.” This distinction is crucial to Jones’ entire soteriology:
Paul says here that sin first entered the world through Adam’s sin. But what did ‘all men’ inherit from Adam? Was it Adam’s SIN that was passed down into all men? NO. It was death, the liability for Adam’s sin… In other words, man did not inherit a sin nature from Adam. He merely inherited the liability for Adam’s sin.5
This analysis provides the key moment for the entire Adam–Christ antitype: if all men inherited only liability (not sin itself), then Christ’s righteousness can be imputed to all men on the same juridical grounds. The parallel imputation of the Last Adam reverses and perfects this process:
God in His sovereignty imputed his sin to our accounts, calling what is not as though it were (Rom. 4:17). This would be a gross injustice; in fact, it would be a false accusation on God’s part, except for the fact that Jesus came to impute His righteousness to our accounts as well. In so doing, He reversed entirely the effects of this ‘temporary injustice’.6
The crucial insight here is that God’s legal proceeding is not arbitrary, but perfectly symmetrical. Adam’s liability was reckoned to everyone; Christ’s righteousness is reckoned to everyone. This symmetry ensures that redemption is universal. Jones reads Rom. 5:18 as the typological capstone of this redemptive-historical architecture:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.7
This symmetry is complete and admits of no exceptions or contingencies — one transgression caused condemnation for all; one act of righteousness causes justification for all. This is the logical capstone of Jones’ Adam–Christ antitype. From this Jones draws the soteriological conclusion that carries his entire universalist vision:
And this is why it is so important that ‘all men’ who died in Adam be saved in Christ.8
Nee-Lee
Nee-Lee emphasizes the bridal dimension of the Adam type: Adam as prototype of Christ not only in judicial responsibility (as Jones), but also in relation to the church as bride. This opens an entirely different perspective on how Adam prefigures Christ. This is not merely a theological or juridical symmetry, but a relationality. This opens the following perspective:
Adam’s deep sleep as type of the cross:
Nee-Lee perceives in Genesis 2:21-22 a typological foreshadowing of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The contexts in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 confirm this:
First Corinthians 15 says that Adam was a type of the Lord Jesus, and Romans 5 says that Adam was a figure of the man who was to come. Adam, then, foreshadowed Christ; he portrayed Christ in figure.9
The deep sleep (Genesis 2:21) is more than a natural anesthetic — it typifies the death of Christ, his unconscious state in the tomb. From the opened side of Christ came blood and water — the blood for redemption, the water for life, together constituting the twin dimensions of Christ’s work:
The Lord Jesus was willing to lose something so that there might come forth a glorious church. The side of Christ was opened by the spear. Out of His side came blood and water. The blood is for redemption, and the water is for life.10
This is the pivotal moment of Nee-Lee’s typology: Christ sacrifices himself not merely as substitute, but as source. His death is generative — it births the church.
Eve from Adam’s rib as type of the church from Christ:
The typological parallel from Genesis 2:21-22 to Calvary is now complete. Just as God took a rib from Adam and built Eve from it (not created from dust, but formed from Adam’s own substance), so Christ formed the church:
God opened Adam’s side and took a rib from him and made it into a woman. In like manner, all that the church is came out of Christ. Everything which is in the church has its source in Christ; none of it is from man.11
This “all comes out of Christ” principle radically distinguishes Nee-Lee’s vision: not only imputation and accounting (as in Jones), but organic sourcing of everything the church is. The church is not self-produced and not grafted on from without, but wholly derived from Christ — rooted in his life.
Christ as Second Man and New Beginning:
The Last Adam is not merely a judicial antitype but a new beginning in God’s creation. Warnock spoke of the second creation; Jones of universal justification; Nee-Lee now adds the bridal dimension — but the capstone is that Christ is not a restoration of the old Adam-pattern, but an entirely different humanity:
The Lord Jesus came and took upon Him a body of flesh and blood. He became the ‘last Adam’ (1 Cor. 15:45)… He is the man whom God is after and desires to obtain.12
This is no defense or correction of Adam’s failures, but the inauguration of an entirely other humanity. With Christ’s resurrection and glorification, the second creation truly begins, in which the first Adam is not merely acquitted of his guilt, but wholly restored and transcended in the reality of the Second Man.
Related types
- Connected: passover (Christ as Passover Lamb links Adam type to Last Adam via 1Cor. 15:45)
- Bridal: eve (Adam-Eve type of Christ-Church marital relationship; Eve from Adam’s rib)
- Progression: four-women (Eve as first woman in progressive revelation; Adam-Eve as first schema)
- Via number symbolism: 2 (two Adam figures as structural principle: first/second, old/new)
Footnotes
Footnotes
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Warnock, FOT (The Feast of Tabernacles), ch. 1 — typological hermeneutical principle. ↩
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Warnock, FOT (The Feast of Tabernacles), ch. 1 — Last Adam as Second Man. ↩
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Warnock, FOT (The Feast of Tabernacles), ch. 5 — life-giving breath after resurrection (John 20:22). ↩
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Warnock, FOT (The Feast of Tabernacles), ch. 7 — identification with Last Adam (1Cor. 15:45, 48). ↩
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Jones, CJ (Creation’s Jubilee), ch. 9 — imputation doctrine: liability, not sin nature. ↩
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Jones, CJ (Creation’s Jubilee), ch. 9 — parallel imputation of righteousness. ↩
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Jones, CJ (Creation’s Jubilee), ch. 9 — Rom. 5:18 as typological capstone. ↩
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Jones, CJ (Creation’s Jubilee), ch. 9 — universal salvation via Adam–Christ type. ↩
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Nee-Lee, TGC (The Glorious Church), Ch. 1 — Adam as type of Christ in 1Cor. 15 and Rom. 5. ↩
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Nee-Lee, TGC (The Glorious Church), Ch. 2 — Adam’s deep sleep as type of the cross. ↩
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Nee-Lee, TGC (The Glorious Church), Ch. 2 — Eve from Adam’s rib = church from Christ. ↩
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Nee-Lee, TGC (The Glorious Church), Ch. 1 — Christ as Last Adam and Second Man. ↩