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,
I think that the Bible does say we are all created in God's image. Two points:
1. In Genesis 1, God divides the creation into several "domains" in Days 1-3 (where he is separating things from each other). Then, in Days 4-6 he populates those domains and appoints governors to rule over them. He appoints the greater luminary to rule over the day and the lesser luminary to rule over the night. But then he appoints man to rule over all the creatures in each of the other domains (sky, seas, land) and makes man the gardener over the plants. So in that sense, man was created "in God's image" because he was made to represent God as the appointed governor over God's creation (except for the lights in the sky, which man cannot govern). The command to govern over the creation also included the command to take dominion over it. No one human (Adam) could fulfill that command alone.
On the other hand, the birds, fish, and land animals do not represent God in this way, because it was Man, not those animals, who were appointed to represent God. So it does have meaning within the context in which it was spoken.
2. When the Pharisees try to trap Jesus about paying Roman taxes, Jesus asks whose image is on the coin. It was Caesar's. Jesus says to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to give to God what belongs to God. The implication is that God's image is on _us_, just as Caesar's image is on the coin; so we are to give ourselves to God.
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
To: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 8:24 pm
Subject: 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
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 Mon Nov 26 08:14:46 2007
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