Is Christ the federal head of a new humanity?

In an article on the TGC website, N. Gray Sutanto puts forward twelve theses that answer the pressing question: “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” These theses, which are drawn from Sutanto’s book For Us and for Our Salvation, are reckoned to be foundational for a Christian anthropology—well, specifically for a “biblical and Reformed-catholic theological anthropology,” which is asking for trouble.

The question is an important one in an age when the old andrarchal, heteronormative paradigm has been abandoned, when social media is reconfiguring the grid of human identities, when technological advances are engendering nightmarish dreams either of a super-humanism or of the collapse of civilisation as we know it… or of both.

In short, the argument is that Adam was the disobedient federal head of a failed humanity; Christ is the obedient federal head of a new regenerate humanity. By “federalism” is meant that humanity is summed up in or represented by an individual person.

My response will be that this tidy theological construction ignores, on the one hand, the critical place of Israel—indeed, of part of Israel—in the story of Jesus, and on the other, the centrality of suffering and death for the understanding of Christ as “image.”

I’ll begin at thesis one, adding a few random comments, skipping some secondary postulations.

A biblical and Reformed-catholic theological anthropology

1. All human beings are made in the image of the triune God and are thus called to represent, enjoy, and glorify God forever.

Sutanto thinks that the first-person plural in Genesis 1:26 “indicates that the whole triune God is the archetype for the human being.” “Triune,” I would say, is anachronistic: “It is now universally admitted that this was not what the plural meant to the original author” (Wenham); and “archetype” makes God in the image of man, in effect, rather than man in the image of God.

5. The image of God refers to humanity as a single, corporate whole, united under a federal head, and thus humanity has a teleological orientation for a consummated existence of perfect and everlasting fellowship with God in a sanctified and perfected cosmos.

Yes, it is humanity as a whole that is in the image of God, but Adam is the beginning or source, not humanity’s “head”; and I can see nothing in the “image of God” motif that points forwards to a “consummated existence.” In other words, the creation of humanity (ʾadam) in the image of God does not imply or necessitate a re-creation of humanity in Christ. The inference that Adam was “thus promised a glorious existence that far exceeded his finite obedience” seems unwarranted.

[p]It might be interesting to consider who—or what sort of person—really is the “federal head” of humanity at the dawn of the Anthropocene.[/p]

Sutanto conflates the two creation accounts in Genesis 1-3: “as the federal head (Adam) was called to be fruitful and multiply, and to work and keep the temple-garden as the prophet, priest, and king.” The corporate ʾadam which was told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth is not the individual ʾadam who was placed in the garden to cultivate it.

The argument then, of course, is that Adam’s original sin “resulted in the imputation of guilt and the transmission of corruption to humanity as a whole.” I’m surprised Sutanto characterises death as the “unnatural separation of the soul from the body.” The verdict on Adam is that he is dust and to dust he will return (Gen. 3:19; Ps. 103:14); the “breath” of the person “returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). It is only as a resurrected body that anyone survives death, in principle.

It might be interesting, incidentally, to consider who—or what sort of person—really is the “federal head” of humanity at the dawn of the Anthropocene. Who best represents humanity’s hubris, its supreme ambition, the promise of a “glorious existence” that exceeds our finitude?

Elon Musk?

But on to the key ninth thesis before we get derailed….

In what sense was Christ the “last Adam”?

9. Christ’s human obedience is the exemplar for the restored and sanctified image of God.

Sutanto thinks that the New Testament distinguishes between the “divine Son of God in his preincarnate state” and “Christ according to his incarnation and the economy of the gospel.” Christ may be in the image of God, therefore, either according to his divine nature or according to his human nature.

In the latter sense, Christ succeeded where Adam failed, demonstrated perfect human obedience, and is “as such the norm for all human beings.” He is, therefore, the “last Adam,” and those who are redeemed “will be made like him in death and resurrection.” It is the saints of the church in heaven who are the consummation of second Adam humanity. In the meantime, in his human existence he exhibited a perfect righteousness, which humans imitate and to the image of which we are being conformed.

Let’s have a look at some of the claims that Sutanto makes and the proof-texts referenced.

1. The argument of the New Testament is not that Jesus succeeded where Adam failed but that he succeeded where Israel failed. He is the son called out of Egypt (Matt. 2:15). When his obedience is tested in the wilderness, he responds by citing commandments given to Israel before the people took possession of the land.

2. The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus shared in the mortality of the “children” that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14-15). Who are these children? Not all humans. They are his “brothers” in the congregation of Israel; they are the “children” given to Isaiah (Is. 8:18)—in other words, those who were part of a righteous prophetic community in Israel in a time of national crisis. He was made not like humanity in every respect but “like his brothers,” the “offspring of Abraham”; he suffered when “tested” so that he might help other Jews being tested in the same way (Heb. 2:16-18).

3. The argument about Adam in Romans 5:12-21 is an argument about Israel. It is Israel which was weak, at enmity with God, sinners, for whom Christ died, now reconciled to the God of their fathers (5:6-11). The problem that Jesus’ act of righteousness solves is that Israel stood condemned by the Law (12:14)—because Israel was also subject to the sin that came into the world with Adam, but it is the condition and fate of Israel, not of humanity, that is at issue here.

4. When Paul says that Christ is the “image of God” in 2 Corinthians 4:4, he speaks as a Jewish apostle who has suffered greatly for the sake of his calling (2 Cor. 2:14-17; 4:8-12). The image to which they are being conformed is that of the suffering Christ. The glory that they are attaining as persecuted apostles is specifically the glory that Christ has attained because he was obedient in suffering and death and therefore has been exalted in the world (3:18; cf. Phil. 2:6-11).

5. It is not the whole church that is “triumphant in heaven” but the martyrs—those who suffered and died because of their witness to the lordship of Jesus, and who are therefore vindicated and rewarded by their resurrection from the dead (cf. Rev. 20:4-6). It is this group which is identified with Christ as the “last Adam,” who will “bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor. 15:45-49). Paul needs the hope of resurrection because he “fought with beasts at Ephesus” (15:32), not because he is a sinner who will die in the normal course of things.

6. This does not make Jesus the “federal head” of a new humanity; it makes him the “firstborn among many brothers,” so painfully engaged in this eschatological renewal of God’s people. All who have the Spirit are “children of God”; it is only those who suffer with Christ who are “joint heirs with Christ” in the immediate redemption of their tortured bodies; nothing can separate them from the love of God (Rom. 8:16-17, 23, 29-36).

7. Even the passages in Ephesians and Colossians presuppose the experience of opposition and persecution (e.g., Eph. 6:10-20). They have died with Christ, they have been raised with Christ in anticipation of a real death and resurrection. They should set their minds not on the things of earth but on the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1-4). That is not how we live now, let’s be honest. When the enthroned Christ is “made known” to the nations, the believers in Colossae will be “made known” with him in glory—they will not have suffered in vain, they will be vindicated, their rightness will be confirmed, they will have great standing—as saints? martyrs?—in the age to come.

So the theological programme has been pursued for the sake of a theoretical and universal relevance at the expense of a coherent understanding of the New Testament narrative. Christ is not the ideal or perfect human, not the head of a new humanity. He is the obedient first century Jew who set the behavioural pattern of righteous suffering, resurrection and vindication that would ensure the continuation of God’s people and the eventual triumph of the churches over Greek-Roman paganism.