Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 7:01 AM, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Beth, I agree with you, certainly to the extent that we can't say there
> has been a time in the history of life on earth when basic natural laws and
> processes were radically different than they are now, which is what would be
> required for the "paradise" view of the pre-fall natural world -- unless
> there is some very strange and unexplainable event involving parallel
> universes or a deceptive "appearance" of age. But, scripture does suggest
> that all of creation was corrupted in some sense by the fall, so I guess I'd
> want to say that something like, the relational brokenness of the fall
> resulted in a corruption of the telos of creation. In some metaphysical
> sense, creation is not what it was before the fall, not what it could have
> been after the fall, and not what it will be in the eschaton.
>

If you look at Rom. 8:20 the creation was subjected to frustration. Ctsis,
the word translated as creation, has aspects of founding or beginning. If
you go with an accomodationist rather than concordist hermeneutic it is
possible that Adam's disobedience affected creation all the way back to the
beginning. This is parallel to Christ's obedience saving those who lived
before Him. God is not bound by time. Consider the two messages to neolithic
Adam:

Your future decision has alreaded affected the World and will bear on all of
humanity in the future.

vs.

You shall surely die.

It is clear that we currently live in a (physically) fallen World. It's at
least worth considering that Paradise was hypothetical in the proteon and
will be real in the eschaton.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

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Received on Mon May 5 11:33:35 2008