"Second" Adam or "Last" Adam: How Should We View Christ?

I am getting ready to start studying at RPTS this coming Fall. One of the courses that I am taking is titled Spiritual Development. There are many short books that are required reading, and for me, that means I need to read them before the class begins. I learned that lesson the hard way a few years ago, but it also is a suggested way about how to be successful in class.

One of the assigned books is by a pastor in the RP church in Northern Ireland named Edward "Ted" Donnelly. I have heard him preach and have read his book on Heaven and Hell. The assigned book is titled Life in Christ, and is based on a series of messages given at the English Conference in August 2001 hosted by the Evangelical Movement of Wales.

Chapter 1 deals a very important part of Covenant Theology: our union with the first Adam and the last Adam. There are two important New Testament texts that deal with this theme, and they are both written in letters by the Apostle Paul to the church of Rome and Corinth. The first appearance can be found in Romans 5:12-19, and then the second appearance of this theme is considered in 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45-47.

In a hymn written by John Henry Newman titled Praise to the Holiest in the height, Newman writes the following in the second stanza:

O loving wisdom of our God!
when all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

Newman refers to Jesus as the "second" Adam in the part of the stanza that I have italicized. However, even other Christians refer to Christ as the "second" Adam. For example, I have enjoyed reading Drs. Blackwood and LeFebvre's book William Symington: Penman of the Scottish Covenanters but on page 153 they write:

We not only need Jesus to restore us to God's favor, but we also need Him (as the Second Adam) to lead us into fulfillment of all God's purposes.

Just doing a simple Google search on "Second Adam" will turn up many results from various theological backgrounds that would suggest that we could either refer to Jesus Christ as the "Second" Adam or the "Last" Adam and still be theologically correct. However, I would like to challenge that idea. While the sense might be understood in the same way, I would suggest that Christ is only the "last" Adam not the "second" Adam and the two terms do carry an implicit substantial difference in their meaning.

On page 20, Donnelly says the following about Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians in light of Newman's hymn:

But the hymn-writer was mistaken. ... For Christ is never referred to in the Scriptures as the second Adam. He is (and it should make us want to shout and sing) the 'last' Adam—the final, the perfect, the ultimate Adam, the supreme representative who has once and for all accomplished salvation.

So where do we get the idea that Christ is the "second Adam?" Who is correct? Well, we get the idea that Christ is the "second" Adam from a logical deduction from Paul's wording in 1 Corinthians 15:47.

Christ is called "the second man," and we get the idea of two different Adams from verse 45. However, if we think that the adjectives "second" or "last" are interchangeable we lose the distinctiveness of the last Adam. "Maybe a 'third' Adam will come around and finally be the Savior I want?" Or, "maybe I am the 'third' Adam?" No! Paul is writing very deliberately to communicate that Jesus is both the last Adam, and the second man.