Re: [asa] Pelagianism?

I ask because I'm discussing with someone whether pre-existing tendencies towards selfishness, violence etc. inherited through biological and social evolution are in themselves "sin."? My view is that such pre-existing tendencies aren't in themselves "sin"; free will is still possible and only volitional acts in furtherance of such tendencies would be "sin."? Only after the Fall is it inevitable that our volitional acts, absent Grace, will tend towards choosing to perpetuate selfishness, violence, etc

In adding to George's response, I want to point out that Paul's discussion in Romans 7 of how the law brings death seems very similar to the picture in Genesis where it is the _knowledge_ of good & evil (i.e., the Law) that necessitates mankind's death.? Both Paul's and Moses' treatments are very compatible with the view that mankind slowly developed an ethical consciousness?and then found himself unwilling to love an absolute God.?

We can speculate on what Genesis is representing by the other tree, the Tree of Life, and the possibility that mankind may have eaten from it first.? My personal view, which I've stated before, is that the Fall is incomprehensible as?merely an?event within spacetime.? As ethical primates in this universe we didn't really have an historical opportunity to avoid spiritual death and so there is an element of intentional fiction in the Genesis narrative.? The awakening to the knowledge of good & evil did indeed?occur in spacetime.? But the projection (into an event in spacetime) of humanity's culpability for that awakening can only be a literary device.

This is why I think that culpability, as a spiritual reality, cannot be comprehended unless we allow that the human spirit transcends the locality of physics and biology, or in other words, unless we allow that the Fall transcends spacetime so that it was primarily a spiritual transaction "in the Heavens" and not merely a biological awakening.? In the same way the Cross is a projection into spacetime, a tangible symbol?of a spiritual transaction in which God took upon Himself mankind's culpability for sin.? That transaction exceeds the?tangible symbol -- mere nails in the flesh and physical death -- and transcends spacetime since it paid for my culpability before I was even born.? The Fall must also exceed the historical events and be a great spiritual transaction like the Cross if there was real culpability for our Fall, as Genesis implies.? (Note that even as effective as Genesis communicates our culpability, it still leaves questions such as Why did Adam sin from an innoce
 nt state, or Why did God put that tree in the middle of the garden -- questions that find a satisfactory answer only when we accept that the spiritural transaction of the Fall transcends the symbols that project into spacetime.)?

Although the Fall and the Cross would be incomprehensible if we tried to interpret them merely as events localized in spacetime, they are not ultimately incomprehensible; in both cases there is a?reality we experience personally working within our hearts.? The symbols projected into spacetime, whether literary or historical, provide the theological interpretation for that experience.? We can only apprehend, not comprehend, and it takes both the experience and the symbols to do so.?

So the first mistake is to try to comprehend the Fall; the second is to try to project its fullness?into a spacetime?event or series of events, which at best are only tangible symbols like the Cross; the third is to disallow Moses the use of those literary devices that he had at hand to communicate more fully something that spacetime events alone are inadequate to communicate.

While I'm no theologian, my feeling is that these considerations puts Augustine's views in much better light.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
To: AmericanScientificAffiliation <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:38 am
Subject: [asa] Pelagianism?

Question:? is it Pelagianism to assert that before the Fall, it was possible for humans not to sin?? I always understood Pelagianism to mean that after the Fall, it is impossible for humans not to sin, but that it is consistent with an Augustinian notion of original sin to say that Adam did not necessarily have to have chosen to sin.

?

I ask because I'm discussing with someone whether pre-existing tendencies towards selfishness, violence etc. inherited through biological and social evolution are in themselves "sin."? My view is that such pre-existing tendencies aren't in themselves "sin"; free will is still possible and only volitional acts in furtherance of such tendencies would be "sin."? Only after the Fall is it inevitable that our volitional acts, absent Grace, will tend towards choosing to perpetuate selfishness, violence, etc.

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Received on Wed Feb 20 08:49:42 2008