In my opinion, when the text reads:

4:25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, ...
5:4 After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were ...

I am inclined to read into Adam's marital relations--coming as they did on the heels of Cain's attack on the human race--
1) intent to concieve
2) an act of faith

I do not see any rationale to separating Eve's act of naming her son from Adam's inclusion in the matter. Someone had to pass faith along to the next generation, and supposing it was Eve alone strikes me as giving the Devil just a little more than's he's due for success.

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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The doctrine of federal headship teaches us that Adam is head of the entire human race, and the last “Adam” Jesus Christ is head of His elect church.

When Jesus Christ was crucified and died, due to His representation of all those given to Him by the Father, these are said to have also died to sin. When Christ resurrected from the grave, it is taught that His people were also raised to new life:

“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection . . . Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” Romans 6:4,5,8


Just as Adam’s disobedience and sin under the covenant of works was the legal basis for God to impute sin to all of Adam’s descendants, so was the last Adam’s righteousness the basis for the elect to be imputed with righteousness and made fit to be reconciled with God according to the Covenant of Grace.

When Adam failed, we all failed, for Adam was our earthly federal head.

When Jesus Christ achieved victory over sin, death, and the devil, all Christians are assured His victory is theirs’, because He is their spiritual federal head.

So consider this: If Adam had repented and exhibited faith in the promise God made to Satan and Eve (Genesis 3:15), and had received pardon of his sin and given grace by God unto salvation, then the entire human race would have benefited from that grace, since Adam represented us all. Every human represented in Adam would have been made recipients of God’s forgiving grace, according to the doctrine of representation under Federal Headship. If Adam was brought under the Covenant of Grace in the garden, then all his descendents would be born under that Covenant of Grace, because Adam is federal head of all mankind. This would be the necessary evidence that Adam indeed repented of his sins before God, and placed his faith in the promised Savior.

But that is not reality or the teaching of Holy Scripture, is it?

All men, born in the flesh from Adam, are born sinners, still obligated before God under the Covenant of Works, and remain under the condemnation of that Law and consignment to death . . .unless and until they receive the benefits of the new Covenant of Grace by faith in Jesus Christ.

So the point is, how can the federal head of all sinful men, be rescued by faith in the promised Savior, but his unborn descendants come into the world totally depraved and corrupted under the Covenant of Works and in need of a Savior?

If righteousness and pardon was Adam’s, while still living as federal head of the human race, then God’s grace and saving pardon should be universally expected by all men.

(And then there goes the Scriptural doctrines of Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement!)

“Direful and dreadful as was the outcome of the Adamic covenant, yet we may, with awe, perceive and admire the divine wisdom in the same. Had God permitted and enabled Adam to stand, all his posterity had been eternally happy. Adam had then been in a very real sense their savior, and while enjoying everlasting bliss, all his posterity would have exclaimed, “For all this we are indebted to our first parent.” Ali, what anointed eye can fail to discern that that would have been far too great a glory for any finite creature to have borne. Only the last Adam was entitled to and capable of sustaining such an honor. Thus, the first man, who was of the earth, earthy, must fall, so as to make way for the second man, who is “the Lord from heaven.” A.W. Pink, Part Two: The Adamic Covenant

(Underlined emphasis, mine.)

__________________
Ronda Rush
Church of the Redeemer
Independent Reformed
California


" . . .It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'" Matthew 4:4

The difficulty with this position is that it ignores the standard Reformed teaching that after the Fall Adam no longer functioned as a public person. John Brown of Haddington is as good a person as any to quote on the matter. Speaking of how by the one offence of Adam the covenant of works was broken in different respects he says:
(Systematic Theology (Compendious View, etc.), p.210 of RHB edition.)

__________________
Ruben
Moderator
F.P.C.I.
Indiana

Vanities and disguises have covered us, and thereby we are naked; licenciousness hath inflam'd us, and thereby we are frozen; voluptuousness hath fed us, and thereby we are sterved, the fancies and traditions of men have taught and instructed us, and thereby we are ignorant.
John Donne

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The Howling Wilderness

So on what legal basis is Adam's sin then imputed to all men?

That he was their representative until the Fall. If he had continued to be their representative afterward, then every needless swat on Abel's bottom, every over indulgence of Cain's selfishness, and every flare of baseless irritation at Eve would also be imputed to us. Having obtained the cursing of all humanity descended from him by ordinary generation, he obtained also his own deposition from his position.

Adam only represented us all in the covenant of works, not in the covenant of grace. Adam is a representee in the covenant of grace, of which Christ alone is the Head.

__________________
Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."

Is not the fact that God alone provided a sacrifice for A & E enough for us to determine they were forgiven? "And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them." The prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 61:10,

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord,My soul will exult in my God;For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

The skin that God covered Adam and Eve represent a type of imputed righteousness provided by Him in which they could stand in His holy presence. This is a shadow of what God provided for us in the imputation of His righteousness through Jesus Christ. Behind those garments, that God made for Adam and Eve has been sacrifice and death. There was a substitutionary death. God must always provide adequate covering for man to stand before Him clothed in righteousness. And without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. I will disagree with Pink that Adam is reprobate. If we read the account of Adam looking for repentance, we end up going the way of some Moral Example atonement where repentance makes Gods sacrifice effectual. God saves first and foremost for His namesake alone.

psalm 106 clearly shows how God works.

6We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly.

7Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.

8Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.

9He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness.

10And he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.

11And the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left.

12Then believed they his words; they sang his praise.

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N. Robert
RCA

"Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."