Heck, Mike, even the devil was made in the image of God. I don't know which way you "fall" on the issue, but it seems to me that the image of God is a necessary prerequisite for any discussion of good, evil, free will, accountability, sin, grace, salvation, or whatever sentient transcendence we may be thus blessed to discuss. And I am as enamored of that Wink Dick describes as he will ever be (more so, I fear), but we both know (Dick and I) that it is not "with" us that God yet winks.
The image of God as vested by us humans is infinitesimally manifest in even the most devoted of His servants. I mean, a coloring-book stick-figure is unambiguously created "in the image of" a flesh and blood, life and death, hope and dreams human being. I can't speak for Dick on this, but I. for one, so long for that wink to be with me and in that longing see my own hubris as emblematic. It's a paradoxical demand, faith, a paradox I am beginning to love as my Wink.
-Mike (Friend of ASA www.thegodofreason.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
To: dickfischer@earthlink.net; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:57 am
Subject: Fw: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re: Original Sin & Monogenism
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Roberts
To: Dick Fischer ; ASA
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re:
Original Sin & Monogenism
Cant buy your ideas Dick. All people including Adolf H are made in the
Image of God. FULL STOP. To say otherwise is simply heresy
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From:
Dick
Fischer
To: ASA
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 1:24
AM
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 18:34:00 2007
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