Hello George,
I come before you with more questions and exploratory statements rather than
firmly-held positions. I have included most of your original post to retain
coherence and context.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: george murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 9:48 AM
> To: Adrian Teo
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Human origins and doctrine
>
> The eastern tradition, represented by Irenaeus, sees
> humanity as
> having been created without sin but in an immature & childlike state.
> Humanity was intended to grow, to develop toward a final
> state of righteous
> maturity in union with God. The first sin then was not so
> much a matter of
> an abrupt "fall" but of getting off the proper road.
>
> To this point I've just been reviewing traditional
> beliefs. But no
> the question is, can we make sense of the basic ideas of the church's
> tradition here if human beings are the result of evolution.
> (& of course I
> mean there evolution through which God has been acting.) If so, how?
>
> First, the basic idea that all human beings are
> sinners & in need of
> salvation by Christ is not touched by concerns about how we
> originated many
> generations ago. In my view the western emphasis on the
> seriousness of the
> sinful condition of humanity is appropriate.
>
> But then the idea of an "original righteousness" of
> the first humans
> comes into question. Especially the ideas often held in the
> west, that the
> first humans had tremendous wisdom & other special attributes
> that we have
> lost is very implausible with an evolutionary scenario. The
> eastern view,
> that humanity began in an immature state, seems closer to the mark.
>
> But we can't simply think of the first humans as moral or
> intellectual blank slates who could just
> as well have avoided sin as sinned. What we know of
> evolution suggests that
> the first humans (however we choose to define them) would
> have inherited a
> heavy genetic &/or behavioral load inclining them toward
> behaviors that we
> would consider sinful - aggression, sexual promiscuity,
> theft, &c. These
> behaviors would not have been sin in their ancestors who were
> not moral
> agents, but would have been sinful in moral agents. & with
> those inherited
> tendencies it's very hard to see how those first moral agents
> could have
> avoided sin.
>
> We can still say that sin is not part of what
> constitutes proper
> human nature, but in the course of real evolutionary history
> sin could not be
> avoided. Sin is not "necessary" but it was "inevitable."
AT: To say that sin was inevitable for the first moral agents because of
evolutionary contraints seems to me to suggest that God set us up for
failure (since I assume that God actively drives the evolutionary process).
How can this be reconciled with Gen 1:31, where God saw that creation was
"very good". Doesn't this view requires a radical redefinition of the word
"good", that includes the understanding that the inevitability of sinning is
part of the definition?
> In brief, I think an eastern metaphor of "taking the
> wrong road"
> (with the consequence of all humanity getting "lost in the
> woods") is better
> than the western metaphor of "the fall," especially if we are
> concerned to
> make theological sense of human evolution.
> ______________________________
> "Getting off the road" is of course a metaphor, as is
> "fall." Its
> point is that humanity as a whole has gotten into a condition in its
> development very far from what God intended. It is a
> condition in which people
> from the beginning of life are unable to "have true fear of
> God and true faith
> in God" and are inclined toward sinful acts.
AT: You seem to be suggesting that humans, when they first emerged as true
moral agents, were already inclined to sinful behaviors due to evolution.
So, again, in a sense, if God steered the evolutionary process, then he
loaded the dice against us. If God intended something other than what was
inevitable (moral agents sinning), then why did he make it so hard for us to
accomplish that something?
OTOH, the traditional understanding that humans began without the
inclination toward sin, but chose to sin freely, seem more in line with the
common understanding of a just, loving and holy God, who did not set us up
for failure, but instead, set us up for the possibility of responding freely
to His love.
> In a sense this is an "environmental" view of sin in
> contrast to an
> hereditary one. But the distinction is not always as sharp
> as it's pictured.
AT: Even in your view, it seems to me that it is as much hereditary as
environmental, since we actually inherit traits that interact with
environmental conditions to bring about the inclination to sinful behaviors,
much the way Evolutionary Psychologist describe say, violence in males
(based upon reproductive strategies). Whatever the case, something is
inherited that is a necessary ingredient for the inclination toward sinful
acts.
Hope this makes sense.
Blessings,
Adrian.
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