From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 06 2003 - 10:19:35 EDT
An inherited Original Sin, in the way the Western
church understands it, is the result of Augustine's
influence and writings (indeed, although Origen talks
about it, he does so differently than does Augustine).
John Damascenus (died A. D. 760) does not include
Original Sin among the doctrines held by the Church.
The Eastern Orthodox church has a very different view
of things in this regard, which may be instructive of
the fact that it is not the only interpretation of
Genesis 3, which obviously does not contain the term.
For what it's worth, nor does any of the Old Testament
speak of Genesis 3 as the source of man's sin, but
rather of man's sinful nature with no reference back
to Genesis 3.
Anyway, not to belabor the point, but the Fall can be
understood entirely differently than Augustine
understood it, even though there has been a
significant accretion of theology in the western
church around Augustine's approach. To understand the
Fall differently from Augustine does not in anyway
represent a modernization or attempt to avoid
particular consequences of Biblical passages since
Augustine's interpretation was the novel one and one
has an unbroken (although diverse) tradition of
understanding of the Fall in very different terms in
the Eastern church.
--- Josh Bembenek <jbembe@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >At the moment I am choosing not to participate in
> the argumentation
> >concerning specific cataclysmic interpretations of
> empirical data, but I
> >would be interested to hear your testimony
> concerning why holding to a YEC
> >position is so important to you. What is at stake
> here? If the professional
> >science community turns out to be correct on
> matters of chronology, what
> >would be the loss to the Christian faith as you
> understand it?
>
>
> Howard, from what I've come to understand the
> primary importance is being
> able to claim that mankind is fallen and that has
> been inherited from Adam
> and Eve. In this view, The Fall requires some kind
> of mechanistic transfer
> into all of humankind from Adam, otherwise we had no
> fall. This is
> partially bolstered by the idea that God looked at
> His creation and called
> it "good." Would the creation of hominids that die,
> have disease, etc. and
> are inherently fallen creatures be "good?"
>
> This is an interesting question.
>
>
> Josh
>
>
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