Descended from Adam, not his evolved relative

Image bearers of Adam is hardly an apt, much less valid or even intelligible, description of human beings who are held either to have existed before Adam or subsequently not to have descended from him.

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Believers with bear Christ's "heavenly" image , the redeemed and glorified image of God, as they have borne Adam's "earthly" image, the original image of God defaced by sin. It is quite foreign to this passage, especially given its comprehensive outlook noted above, to suppose that some not in the image of Adam will bear the glory-image of Christ. There is no hope of salvation for sinners who do not bear the image of Adam by ordinary generation. Christ cannot and does not redeem what he has not assumed, and what he has assumed is the nature of those who bear the image of Adam and as they do so by natural descent.

 

Richard Gaffin, "No Adam, No Gospel", p.12