On Thursday, January 11, the Brisbane branch of the Thomas More Centre began the year with a talk by our very own Mark Makowiecki entitled “The New Adam: How Jesus Undoes the Fall of Man in the Gospel of John”.

About a dozen people gathered in the meeting room of Indooroopilly Library (which will be the site of fortnightly TMC talks in Brisbane until May) and, after an aperitif of wine, beer, cheese and grapes, settled in to hear how, in the Gospel of John, Jesus methodically reverses the sins of Adam by retracing the steps (and correcting the missteps) of the first man.

Mark, who spent four years studying John’s Gospel for his research degree, said that John uses three tools to communicate the above: typology, the doctrine of recapitulation, and chiasmus. Of course, since these terms were unlikely to be familiar to most ears, he began by defining these terms and by providing examples of their use within the biblical canon.

The Three Keys to John's Gospel

Typology he defined as "the study of persons, events, and things in the Old Testament as foreshadowings of persons, events, and things in the New Testament, with the former being called 'types' and the latter 'antitypes'". So, for example, Paul describes Adam as a ‘type’ of Christ (see Romans 5:14) because, just “as [Adam’s] trespass [at the tree] led to condemnation for all men, so [Christ’s] act of righteousness [on the tree] leads to acquittal and life for all men" (Romans 5:18).

As for the doctrine of recapitulation, this refers to Christ’s mission to recapitulate (‘sum up,’ ‘go over’) creation in himself (see Ephesians 1:9-10). As part of this recapitulation, Jesus recapitulated the first man in himself. This was necessary because, since Adam’s “trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom 5:18) and “in Adam all die” (1 Cor 15:22), the human race needed a new Adam who could atone for the trespass and who, by incorporating us into his glorified body, could restore us to communion and life with God.

Irenaeus (a Church Father cited frequently during the talk) claimed that Christ’s recapitulation of Adam took place on two levels. First, Jesus recapitulated the first man in a physical sense, not only by being born of the race of Adam, but even by sharing in “the same kind of birth”. Indeed, “just as the first-fashioned Adam got his substance from untilled and as yet virgin soil”, so the Word was born of a virgin so that his birth would be a recapitulation of Adam’s. This physical recapitulation of Adam was important, says Irenaeus, because it meant that sin could be destroyed “by means of that same flesh through which it had gained the mastery”. In other words, the Word became like Adam physically as a precondition for “[overcoming] through Adam what had stricken us through Adam”.

The second level of Jesus’ recapitulation of Adam involved him ‘re-living’, as it were, Adam’s life. This culminated in his ‘going over’ the day of Adam’s death: having re-entered the garden, he was able to undo the old disobedience wrought in the tree by obediently dying on the tree. One could therefore say that recapitulation includes the process by which historical persons (such as Adam) and events (such as the Fall) are typologically reenacted.

Regarding chiasmus, this was defined as the use of “rhetorical or thematic figures … whereby words, clauses, phrases, characters and plot elements are exchanged in a mirror-like inversion”. Simple examples Mark gave were the chiasms contained in Genesis 9:6 and 1 John 3:9:

 (A) Whoever sheds              (A) No one begotten by God
    (B) the blood                         (B) commits sin;
       (C) of man                             (C) for God's seed abides in him,
       (C) by man                          (B) and he cannot sin
    (B) shall his blood             (A) because he is begotten by God.
 (A) shed

In these patterns, the elements in the first half are reversed in the second half. It turns out that John found this kind of pattern is narratologically useful because, when a series of events is arranged chiastically, it communicates a kind of ‘undoing’.

The Atonement

Having described how typology, recapitulation, and chiasmus work, Mark proceeded to show how John portrays Jesus as a new Adam who undoes the sins of the old Adam. Beginning with Genesis 3, he showed how Adam became increasingly enslaved by what Irenaeus calls “prison bonds” or “works of the devil”: First, he eats the fruit in disobedience (3:6); then he clothes himself out of shame (3:7); he hides from God out of fear (3:8); he shirks responsibility for his actions by casting blame on his wife (3:12); and, finally, he is exiled from the garden in disgrace (3:23).

Turning to John 18-19, Mark showed how Jesus performs an inverse series of counteractions: he enters a garden (18:1); he confronts his enemies (18:4); he shoulders responsibility and has his companions spared (18:8-9); he is stripped naked (19:23); and he drinks “the cup” of sour wine in obedience (19:30, see 18:11).

Provided that Genesis 3:8 and 3:12, and John 18:4 and 18:8-9 are grouped together, these actions and counteractions form the chiastic pattern he has called the Gen-John chiasm. Here is the simplified version:

(A) Adam disobediently ate the fruit
(B) Adam, who was naked. clothed himself
(C) Adam hid from God and blamed his companion
(D) Adam departs from the garden
(D') Jesus enters a garden
(C') Jesus confronts his enimies and has his companions spared
(B') Jesus who was clothed is stripped nakedd
(A') Jesus obediently drinks the sour wine

The chiasm communicates the idea that Jesus is a new Adam who makes his way back through the Fall. Moving from the centre of the chiasm outward, Jesus retraces the steps and corrects the missteps of Adam, but from the opposite direction: Adam departed the garden, Jesus enters the garden; Adam hid, Jesus comes forward; Adam blamed the companion God had given him; Jesus has the companions God has given him spared; Adam, who was naked, clothed himself with an apron of sewn fig leaves, Jesus, who was clothed with an unsewn tunic, is stripped naked; Adam ate the fruit in disobedience, Jesus drinks the sour wine in obedience. In short, Jesus brings about the atonement by untying, as it were, the knots tied by Adam.

Mark closed his talk by making some interesting observations. For example, he pointed out that the behaviours of those who have not yet ‘put off’ the old man (see Ephesians 4:22) are likely to resemble those of Adam: disobedience, shame, fear, blameshifting, alienation. Whereas, for those who have put on the new man, their life will increasingly reflect the Saviour’s behaviour during his passion: obedience, blamelessness (innocence), courage, responsibility, communion. As John says, “By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:5-6).

Mark also posed the following question: “Since John seems to have chiastically tied the consumption of the sour wine to the consumption of the forbidden fruit, then, since the old Eve gave the fruit to the old Adam, is John suggesting that a new Eve gave the sour wine to the new Adam?” Suffice it to say, he hinted at having found an answer – one which would have significant ramifications the field of Mariology, an area of study that went into steep decline in the middle of the twentieth century.

Following the talk, everyone walked to the nearby pub for some drinks and dinner. A couple of people requested that Mark follow up his talk with one about Mary being the new Eve, and so that is the plan for the next event on Thursday, January 25. If you are in or around Brisbane on that date, we’d love to see you there!

P.S. For those who are interested, an article on which Mark’s talk was based will be published online in April. A link to the free article will be posted on the TMC Facebook page when it becomes available.

Stay tuned!

The Thomas More Centre team