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

I don't think we would speak of earlier pre-Adamic humans as being
"fallen." There was a time God "winked at" their ignorance. Adam was
fallen in that he failed in his primary mission and fell from a state of
grace, living in obedience, to another state where animal sacrifice was
required as atonement for his transgressions which passed to his
generations. Adam was the one God chose as the federal head of the
human race to bring humanity into a state of accountability. We all are
fallen as our appointed leader was fallen. What effect Adam's sin had
on those long deceased is fairly superfluous in my estimation.

If Adam was chosen to represent God, another way of stating that in
Hebrew-speak is Adam was "in the image" of God. I doubt whether every
member of the family of Homo sapiens who ever walked the earth
represents God. If so, then it virtually has no meaning at all. Thus
when Christ was in the image Paul was just telling us that he had an
opposable thumb, walked on two legs, and had a cranial capacity of
roughly 1400 cubic centimeters.

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of philtill@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 6:41 PM
To: dopderbeck@gmail.com
Cc: gbrown@Colorado.EDU; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re: Original
Sin & Monogenism

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 20:25:03 2007