Response: The first man was Adam - he was created from the dust of the ground, and so it is said that he was of the earth, earthly. The RSV translates this verse as, "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven." The second MAN is Jesus, who is said to be from heaven because:

 

1) His life and message was a perfect expression of God's life and message. God's plan, intention, word (logos) was manifest, was brought to fruition, in and through the man Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore Jesus is said to have brought these things "from heaven".

 

                   a) Jesus described himself as, "a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God" (Jn 8:40).
                   b) God was in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19).
                   c) Jesus had no power of his own (John 5:19, 30; 6:38).

 

2) His miraculous conception. It doesn't mean He (Jesus) literally preexisted, it means that since God was His Father, He (Jesus) was from heaven. I sometimes say that I am Irish. That doesn't mean that I'm literally from Ireland. What that means is that my forefather is from Ireland.

 

Notice that Paul says in the very next verse, "As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man from heaven, so are those who are of heaven." If the "man from heaven" literally preexisted in heaven before he became a man, then Paul says the same thing for many others - "so are those who are of heaven." Most Trinitarians do not believe that human beings literally preexisted in heaven before they were born on earth - so they do not take, "so are those who are of heaven" literally. But they do take "...the second man is from heaven" literally. In doing this they completely miss Paul's logical equation: "...the second man is from heaven - so are those who are of heaven." Both phrases are either literal or not. Believe me when I say I can understand an honest mistake. But consciously splitting the literalness of one from the other when Paul equates the two phrases is not intellectually honest.

 

Jeremiah 43:1: "When Jeremiah finished telling the people all the words of the Lord their God--everything the Lord had sent him to tell them..." The Lord sent Jeremiah. If we put this together with Jeremiah 1:5 where God tells Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..." we might conclude that Jeremiah existed in heaven before he was born on earth - but we don't. We don't take it literally. It's a figure of speech that means that Jeremiah existed in God's mind/plan/intention before he actually literally existed.

 

In John 1:06 it says of John the Baptist: "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." Most Trinitarians do not believe John literally preexisted before he was "sent from God." These phrases; "from God", "from heaven" etc are not meant literally; they are Hebraic figures of speech.

 

Matthew 21:23-27:

 

And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"

 

Jesus answered them, "I also will ask you a question; and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?"

 

And they argued with one another, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'From men,' we are afraid of the multitude; for all hold that John was a prophet."

 

 

So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."

 

Notice that "from heaven"  = "authority". NOT "from heaven" =  literally from heaven. So when Paul says that Jesus is the "man from heaven" he means, "the man whose authority is from heaven."

 

Secondary issue: I habitually refer to several different translations - KJV, RSV, NASB, NEB, Phillips, Berkeley and the Jerusalem Bible. Of these seven, the ONLY one that says, "...the second man is the Lord from heaven" is the KJV. All the others say, "the second man is from heaven." I suspect "the Lord" is an interpolation. However, I don't make a big deal out of it because "Lord" does not necessarily mean "God" - that is, YHWH.

 

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