Re: [asa] sin or Sin?

In order to have the 1st human sin correspond theologically (not historically) to the story of Gen.3, it must be something whose essence was failure to trust & obey God.  There was nothing intrinsically wrong with eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge - but it had been forbidden by God.  If you want to express this in terms of the second table being an expression of the divine character, fine.

 

I want to be careful about letting infants off the hook as far as sin is concerned.  But that's the other side of the coin from the fact that we shouldn't be too quick to deny the possibility of infant faith, as long as we don't undferstand faith in a purely intellectual way - we know that infants can come to trust parnets &c very early.  That's one reason why infant baptism makes sense.    

 

George,
in the above two comments you hit on the two things that I think are the essence of the issue.  

(1) In just the past year I've started thinking that there was no actual sin in eating of the tree of knowledge of good & evil (TKGE), and that the "command" not to eat of it should be seen primarily as practical "advice" from a loving Creator because becoming a moral agent would inherently bring about our death UNLESS we had first been infused with His life by faith.  God wasn't setting up an arbitrary command for us to obey as a test.  Neither was he saying that to know good & evil is inherently wrong (since man became like God in so eating).  Rather, God was telling us of the inevitability of death if we became moral agents in our then-present state, and thus telling us not to go there.  That's along the idea of what Paul says in Gal.3:21, that the law is unable to impart life.  Knowing the law inherently results in death because we are powerless to obey apart from God's life received by faith.

(2) The idea that an infant can have faith (as in the Lutheran tradition, or as in John the Baptist filled with the Spirit in his mother's womb) also implies that a pre-human primate can have faith.  So it may be possible to have spiritual life before knowing good from evil.  In fact, I think that should be accepted as a necessary conclusion:  if God cares about mentally disabled and infants and includes them in His family, then there is no reason why less intelligent primates couldn't have been brought into His family before sufficient mental ability to know good & evil, too.  That would correspond to eating of the other tree in the garden, the Tree of Life (TL), prior to eating of the TKGE.

So (in the symbolism of Genesis 3) this implies that Man could have eaten of both trees as long as TL was chosen first and TKGE second.  I.e., God's command not to eat of the TKGE would have been rescinded after Man ate of the TL.  Then, we could have become creatures knowing good & evil but having life to obey throughout the process of mental advancement.  On the other hand, because we mentally advanced to know good & evil without first having the life & power to obey what we learned, we inherently and inevitably wound up in spiritual death.  Knowing right from wrong must result in death if we do not have the power to do the right and avoid the wrong.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: ASA list <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 9:33 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] sin or Sin?

Thanks to those who've responded on this thread.  I'll bundle some comments to each.

 

Steve M

 

1st, I'm afraid I'm a bit confused by your discussion.  Maybe that's my fault for giving the impression that sins that injure other creatures are radically different from sin against God directly.  All sin is ultimately sin against God, whether against the 1st Commandment or the 5th, 7th or 9th.  The basic Commandment  - & the reason that it's 1st - is that God is to be 1st for us, ahead of anything else.  Sin against that needn't directly injure others.  Murder or theft, OTOH, do injure others & are thus sins "against" a neighbor, but are also against God because they contradict God's will & the authority for the commands against such acts is God's.  

 

In any case, the saving work of Christ deals with all sin, both the fundamental idolatry that underlies other sins and those other sins as well.  But it has to begin with the former because what is necessary is restoration of true faith in the true God, which is what the 1st Commandment calls for.

 

In the paper I cited I didn't deal at length with how the cross-resurrection event changes the situation - i.e., atonement.  That's what I'm working on at present - I gave a preliminary paper on this at the ASA -CIS meeting in Edinburgh last fall.  (The audio is available at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/meetings/Edinburgh2007/Edinburgh_paperlinks.html%c2 .)  Briefly - & I did hint at this in the PSCF paper - it involves a reorientation of creation toward its proper role.  But though a decisive turn has brought about, we still struggle with sin of all types, idolatry and others. 

 

David O

 

In my brief discussion I didn't mean to suggest that sins against the 2d table of the law were to be relativized or were any less sins against God than idolatry - see my response to Steve above.  The commandment to put God 1st includes obedience to God's will as expressed in Commandments 2-10.  Nevertheless, the 1st really is 1st, as Paul makes clear in Romans 1.  Jesus makes the same point when he says that "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart &c" is the greatest commandment & "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" is 2d. 

 

In order to have the 1st human sin correspond theologically (not historically) to the story of Gen.3, it must be something whose essence was failure to trust & obey God.  There was nothing intrinsically wrong with eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge - but it had been forbidden by God.  If you want to express this in terms of the second table being an expression of the divine character, fine.

 

I want to be careful about letting infants off the hook as far as sin is concerned.  But that's the other side of the coin from the fact that we shouldn't be too quick to deny the possibility of infant faith, as long as we don't undferstand faith in a purely intellectual way - we know that infants can come to trust parnets &c very early.  That's one reason why infant baptism makes sense.    

 

Moorad A & David S

 

I don't know whether the transition "from brute to moral man" was slow or sudden & I don't think anyone else.  If God took ~10 Gyr to create the physical aspect of humans from the big bang, I don't think we should be dogmatic about this.  I think Teilhard's analogy of a phase change for the emergence of consciousness is interesting & might apply here - heat a pot of water slowly & nothing dramatic happens.  The temperature rises slowly until, at a certain point, there's a qualitative change as it starts boiling.

 

Gregory A

 

In my PSCF paper I talked - borrowing an idea from Burhoe via Hefner - of humanity as a "symbiosis" of biology and culture, & discussed the "mechanism" of transmission of sinfulness as a polluted "cultural atmosphere."  Obviously those ideas require critique and input from sociologists as well as from other scientists and from theologians.  It would be helpful if you would choose to contribute in that way instead of just sniping at those who you think have inadequate appreciation for your field.

 

Jim A 

 

In a sense God "invents" the distinction between good and evil for humans by placing a boundary for them.  Humans "discover" it, not through an intellectual knowledge of the distinction but by experiencing evil, having previously experienced good.

 

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

----- Original Message -----

From: Steve Martin

To: George Murphy

Cc: ASA list

Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 1:54 PM

Subject: Re: [asa] sin or Sin?

Hi George,

Ok.   Maybe something is finally clicking.   I must admit, I read your PSCF article when it came out a year and a half ago – several times in fact.  But I can't say it brought me any closer to closure on the most difficult implication of human evolution: the origin of sin.   (I know you have indicated that this is a "research program that is work in progress"). 

There is a palindromic progression here (I'm capitalizing the whole second instance of sin for clarity – if only my own):    Humanity's sin at one point became SIN.   Ie. sin came first -> SIN came later.  Then, through the death & resurrection of Christ, God incarnate, SIN is addressed, but as Paul indicated we still struggle with sin.   Ie. God dealt/deals with sin/SIN in the reverse order of its appearance - with our SIN first (ie. brought creation back into a right relationship with God) and then through the Holy Spirit, helps us "work out our salvation" and works towards the eradication of sin. 

Historically, it would look like this:

Initial Creation 

sin and then SIN enter Creation

The Cross

SIN and then sin is dealt with because of the Cross

Eschatology: All things become new (sin & SIN are eradicated)

Does this make sense?  Or am I still missing the point?   

thanks,

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:55 AM, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:

    I have spoken in the past - & fairly recently here - about the need for creatures to have become "moral agents" before it's possible to speak about them "sinning."  I.e., our primate ancestors would to some extent have deceived, stolen from, been sexually promiscuous with, and killed other members of their same species but we would not say that in so doing they would have "sinned."  It is only when they had a sense of right & wrong that that term would be appropriate. 

 

    I've realized that that kind of language is inadequate.  The first criterion for a creature to be able to sin is for it to be aware in some way of God and God's will, so that that creature can intentionally give something other than God 1st place in its life.  I.e., it has to be able to violate the substance of the 1st Commandment.  That is the fundamental sin, as Paul argues in Romans 1.  There "worshipping the creature rather than the creator" is Sin with a capital S, & all the consequences that Paul lists - sexual immorality &c - are sins with a small s.  Those are the things we usually describe as "moral failings."

 

    I actually made this point in the 2006 PSCF that I referenced in my post to Moorad yesterday, but by continuing the "moral agents" language may have clouded the issue.  The point is not simply "morality" in the usual sense of the term but "religion" as "ultimate concern.  This means that in order for some group of hominids to be capable of sin, they would somehow have to have become aware of God and God's will for them, however murkily that may have been.  

 

    This has a number of consequences.  E.g., there has been a good deal of discussion of the evolution of morality, some of which has been used to discredit claims that the existence of a moral sense in humans is an argument for religion.  (Dawkins, e.g.)  How the evolution of morality is connected with the emergence of religious awareness is something that needs to be explored, but the distinction is significant.  

 

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

-- 
-- 
Steve Martin (CSCA)
http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com 
________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever.  Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.