Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

Just another thought I wanted to add -- the flood is a type concerning
scoffers and the second coming because people would have likely scoffed at
Noah when he was building the ark. * "When is this 'flood' going to happen?
God isn't going to judge us, if there is a God." *There is also perhaps an
echo of the serpent's lie in the scoffer's attitude: "*you won't surely
die." *People live in denial about the surety of God's judgment, but he
will surely return to judge.

On 3/30/07, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> *George said: What you seem to to be suggesting is that the scoffers in
> question are arguing for the uniformity of nature & against miraculous
> interventions.*
>
> Phil -- is that what you were suggesting? I didn't take it that way.
>
> It seems to me that the scoffers are deriding the idea of a God who
> personally returns to judge. The scoffing isn't about God's ability to
> destroy the earth, or generally about God's ability to do miracles in
> contrast to the uniformity of nature, it's about the belief in a personal
> God incarnate who will come to the world specifically to judge.
>
> If the scoffers are Greeks, it seems to me that their scoffing would be in
> line with the sort of scoffing that evidently occurred against Christians
> about the notion of the resurrection of the body. Their view of God or the
> gods was that of detached, distant, arbitrary force, not of a God whose
> character is consistent and judgment is sure. They could not conceive of a
> God who would become man, die, rise again bodily, and keep a promise to
> return to raise his followers and judge those who reject him: *"the gods
> cannot be trusted to keep their word. Forget the gods. Give up this
> foolishness and take your luck as it comes like everyone else."*
>
> Or, if the scoffers are Jews, their scoffing would be in line with the
> rejection of Jesus as Messiah. They could not conceive of a messiah who
> would first suffer and die and then rise again to return later. If
> Jesus died, he was dead, and not the messiah. They scoffed at the Christian
> community's eschatological hope: *"your messiah is dead -- where is this
> coming you speak of? Why hasn't it happened? It hasn't happened because
> he's rotting in the grave."*
>
> Whether they believed in some notion of the uniformity of nature isn't the
> point -- and as you suggest, they probably didn't.
>
> The reason Peter chooses the flood is that it is *the* typological example
> of God's judgment from the Jewish perspective. Peter's discussion of the
> flood in chapter 2 in fact echoes almost precisely Jesus' use of the flood
> as a type in Matthew 24 and Luke 17.
>
> Or Phil, did I miss your point?
>
> On 3/30/07, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Phil et al -
> >
> > I think your argument is the best has been presented here against my
> position. What you seem to to be suggesting is that the scoffers in
> question are arguing for the uniformity of nature & against miraculous
> interventions. I'll leave it to the historians to decide how likely that is
> ~ A.D. 100. I would have to ask why the author has chosen the flood as a
> counterexample instead of many of the other miraculous interventions that
> could be gathered from the OT. Why the flood, which is at least in some
> ways comparable to the destruction of the world that he's arguing for,
> instead of some other disruption of the regularity of natural process such
> as ( e.g.) Elisha's floating ax head.?
> >
> > On your following post: It's worth noting Herodotus' qualification when
> he reports the circumnavigation of Africa: "which I do not myself believe."
>
> >
> > Shalom
> > George
> > http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Mar 30 21:27:26 2007