OK, I'll concede my argument from Romans 5 is weak, but my sense is that Paul assumes everybody knows we are "in Adam" and that common understanding came from Genesis 2ff implying that we are descended from Adam.? You can't disagree with me that this was probably the common understanding of Paul and his contemporaries, right?? Paul's argument in Romans 5?does nothing to modify that view, whereas he does treat being "in Christ" differently as being something we must "receive" (v. 17).? Being in Adam is universal whereas being in Christ is not, so the comparison is inherently asymmetric, and in some ways he treats it asymmetrically.
David O. wrote:
Perhaps we can think of it this way -- as other "people" would come into contact with Adam as head of the race, the imago dei would be imparted to them.?????
Don't you think this is ad hoc?? The imago dei is discussed only in the Genesis 1 creation account, not in Genesis 2 where the concept of an individual Adam is introduced.? The sense I get from Genesis 1 is that God is discussing a universal characteristic of humanity, not something that is conferred to a individuals sometime after their creation.
It's also dangerous because it says that humans aren't necessarily in God's image as an inherent characteristic, and idea that could be abused to great harm.
David O. wrote:
At the end of the day, what alternative can you offer?? Your notion that everyone was metaphysically present in Adam doesn't seem to be materially different than what I'm saying here.?Either way, it isn't "ordinary generation."??
I agree that we are discussing two ideas that are very close in some ways.? But I think you are striving hard to keep Adam as a literal individual, even though you are willing to give up the very reasons why it was thought to be important for him to be a literal individual.? (Is this a fair statement?)? And in the process, I think it makes the concordism more ad hoc instead of more natural.
If "Adam" represents early humanity rather than an individual, and if early humanity was universally fallen, then we all get our fallenness and our imago dei through ordinary generation from that early group of humanity.? So it is ordinary generation.? Similarly, George says that the Fall occurred within that early humanity, and so it could all have been ordinary generation since then.? So it is not hard to maintain ordinary generation in a polygenetic view.?
What I'm questioning is whether the early humans were ever inherently unfallen.? It may have been that they became "human" and fell simultaneously.? In gaining the knowledge of good & evil, they died because they could not do good.? This would be a natural understanding for why _knowing_ good & evil?causes the Fall.? But if so, then I have to wonder if they ever really had a chance to live as unfallen humans with the imago dei.? If not, then Genesis 2&c seems disengenuous, because it is explaining that God is not the author of sin.? So that's why I wonder if there is something more mysterious to the Fall than simply early man going astray because his biological nature made it impossible for him to keep the moral law that he was at last beginning to grasp.? So maybe mankind's ultimate culpability in our Fall is something that is not entirely comprehensible within spacetime.? We can't blame it on the biology that God set up because in a mysterious way we all really did want to
sin.
We all affirm our position as fallen when we are old enough to culpably sin, and so in a sense we all do re-enact or re-affirm the Fall.? (And we are judged for our sin, not for the original sin.)? The purpose of the "Adam" account is to explain that God is not responsible for original sin and (as exposited by Paul) to explain why sinfulness is universal.? If original sin is a spiritual mystery in any case, then is it that much worse a mystery to affirm that there was no garden at all, and that the original sin is something incomprehensible apart from metaphors, like the one given in Genesis 2&c?
I think that kind of view naturally concords with science without any ad hoc features.? It simply affirms that mankind's culpability is presented via the metaphor of the garden, and that we all get it by ordinary generation from the earliest group of humanity.? Is that not elegant?
Again, I am prepared to chuck all these ideas if they are heretical.? This is just a thought experiment.
Phil
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Received on Sun Nov 25 18:42:00 2007
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