Re: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re: Original Sin & Monogenism

Phil said: *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.*
**
Well, I suppose the broadly theological reasons aren't as important, or at
least perhaps they can be handled either way. But there still is the
problem of scripture, and it seems to me that the NT treats Adam as an
individual -- actually as both an individual *and* a type. So, IMHO, that's
the way we need to treat him. (Take a look at the Clouser article I posted
-- I think he does this well).

I'm not sure it's fair to deem this "concordism." I don't think there's any
suggestion here that Gen. 2 contains scientifically verifiable facts that
wouldn't have been evident to the original readers, which to me is the heart
of classic concordism (e.g., "the earth was divided in the days of Peleg"
means something about the continents, etc.). And I don't think it's
"concordism" to recognize that the NT treats Adam as an individual. Sure,
it's possible that Jesus and Paul's references to Adam as an individual
represent anachronistic accomodations, but I fear that starts to stretch the
accommodation principle too far.

And yes, the details of precisely how the individual Adam's representative
status affected his contemporaries are bound to be ad hoc whenever we
speculate about them, because scripture doesn't fill in those details. So,
I think we present those as thought experiments and not as proposals. I
like what Clouser says in his article -- while Genesis 2 might give some
historical details in the midst of its symbolism, it does not give *
encyclopedic* history. We know from general revelation that there likely is
more to the story, but scripture only gives us certain specifics, and we're
left to wonder (and sometimes worry!) about "the rest of the story."

On Nov 25, 2007 6:40 PM, <philtill@aol.com> wrote:

> 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 19:02:01 2007