Re: Dick Fisher's "historical basis" remains no less doubtful

----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Isaac" <rmisaac@bellatlantic.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 7:57 AM
Subject: Fw: Dick Fisher's "historical basis" remains no less doubtful

>
> Moorad:>
>> > George, I thought there were no "other people." Isn't all of humanity
>> > descended from Adam and the Fall gave rise to different beings from
>> > that
>> > before the Fall?
>>
>> But in Dick's interpretation there are such "other people." That's the
>> problem.
>>
>> Shalom
>> George
>>
>>
> Dick's approach seems to require that Adam's sin is descriptive, rather
> than
> causative, of the human condition of sin. That however leads to other
> problems with the interpretation of "...by one man...."

Certainly one aspect of the story of the sin of Adam & Eve, & the Christian
doctrine of original sin, is a description of the existential condition of
all human beings. We are all in a state of separation from God from the
very beginning of our lives, and the sins which we commit come from that
condition. & to the extent that one emphasizes that aspect of the doctrine,
there is no need to be concerned about who Adam was or trying to pinpoint
when the events described in Gen.3 took place.

But if this is true of all human beings, it was true fo the 1st humans (&
how many there were or when they lived is of 2dary importance.) That raises
the question of how humanity came to be in this state. It isn't sufficient
just to say that we've always been that way, for that suggests that God
created humanity (via the evolutionary process) as sinners, & thus that God
is the creator of sin.

What is necessary for an adequate theology of original sin with an
evolutionary anthropology is to be able to say

1) How the 1st hominids who were _theologically_ human could have been
responsible for initiating this condition of alienation from God without the
assumption (unrealistic in view of what we know about human evolution) of a
"state of integrity" as a an historical period of human existence, &

2) How this sinful condition continues to propagate itself with the idea
(again unrealistic) that there is something like a "sin gene."

These are the real theological issues. Localization of the 1st humans &
historical concordist interpretations of Genesis are of relatively minor
importance in comparison.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Sun Nov 14 17:44:41 2004