Re: Golden Age (was Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey)

If there was no Edenic pre-fall state for humans at all, this also has
deep theological significance, because it means the Church has
misunderstood the creation-fall-redemption story for most of its
history.

David,

I don't think the situation is as bad as you do.? I don't see any need to give up important elements of traditional theology, yet.

Regarding the Edenic pre-fall state,?what the Bible tells us about it?was that humanity did not know good from evil.? Genesis 2-3 clearly teaches this, but the church tends not to accept this one detail literally because ironically it contradicts our otherwise ultra-literal interpretation of the account, which we have been trying to force upon it.? We have reasoned, if Adam and Eve were as smart as the story (taken literally) implies --?being able to name the animals and all that --?then how could they not _literally_ know the difference between good & evil?? Rather than understanding the story to be a myth teaching theology, we want to flesh out Adam & Eve as literal humans and so we say they were actually moral agents before the fall, that the tree of the knowledge of good & evil (TKGE) didn't really give them the knowledge of good & evil as the name implies, and that it only made them start seeking to reason the _bounds_ of good & evil apart from reliance on God.? But that
  nuanced interpretation of the TKGE is something that we have smuggled into the text in order to save the ultra-literalism.

My take on interpreting Genesis is that the elements obviously loaded with symbolic meaning are the _whole_ point of the story and everything else is just literary setting according to the norms of the genre (myth).? Thus, the theological symbols are the starting point, the non-negotiables in understanding the text.? The names of the two trees?are to be our starting point in understanding this text; they are?not something we may minimize to save a more literal reading of the other, less important parts of the account.? They are?what the whole story was built around.? Naming the animals does have importance because it tells us that humans are God's representative in taking dominion over the animals, and that males and females need each other; but this part of the story wasn't intended to teach us us that a man literally sat down once upon a time and produced a list of verbalizations to for the animals, and that therefore early man at the point represented by this story was lit
 erally a speaking creature and as intelligent as we are.? The names of the four rivers are likewise not so important, because there is very little apparent symbolism in them.? This is the kind of answer I was trying to get from George as to his hermeneutic:? I want to see if this is the way he approaches the text (beyond the Christological hermeneutic that is his priority, and mine I think).

If we follow this hermeneutic, taking as the primary data in Genesis 2-4 those symbolic, mythological?elements around which everything else was built, then we must start out with a mankind?that is becoming moral agents for the first time.? In that case, we can see that there really _was_ an Edenic pre-fall state for humans and we have excellent correspondence with the scientific view.? The Edenic pre-fall state was that they were sinless in the same way that dogs or jellyfish are sinless.? The difference with man on the one hand and dogs or jellyfish on the other, was that man was on the cusp of knowing good & evil, and of having spiritual life, having not one but two trees to eat from.? The second tree was Christ, and eating of it means to imbibe of his life as a free gift of grace.? (It appears later in the story in the form of the cross.)? Presumably, one need not know good from evil to feed on Christ.? John the Baptist in his mothers' womb was one example of this.? So in
 "Eden" we are told that once upon a time mankind was on the cusp of beginning to feed on Christ, but instead he became first a creature knowing good & evil, and in knowing the right thing to do but not having the life of Christ within us to enable us to do it, we were thereby condemned with the law upon our hearts as sinners and thus we spiritually died.? If, within the symbolism of the story, man had eaten of the other tree first, then perhaps we could have later eaten of the TKGE without being condemned by the law.? But that is speculation since the story does not tell us about those possibilities.

That's how I read the text.? As far as I can see from this point of view, we _don't_ have to give up anything theologically important from traditional Christianity.? It only requires us to relax the death-grip of literalism from a particular text that was clearly mythological in nature from the beginning and that was never intended by its author to be read literally.? I do want to know more theological and historical details of the Fall as you do, but I haven't yet seen any need to give anything important up.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
To: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Tue, 6 May 2008 9:13 pm
Subject: Re: Golden Age (was Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey)

George said: It may have been that the first humans in a theological
sense, & the first to sin, were a single couple but ther genetic
evidence seems against it.

I respond: I don't see why this is so, if "in a theological sense" is
meant to distinguish the merely biological sense. The genetic
evidence is against the allelic diversity in the human genome arising
from a single couple earlier than millions of years ago. But it seems
to me that this says nothing at all about whether the first humans "in
a theological sense" could have been a single pair.

George said: [the location of paradise] has no theological significance.

I respond: But, there is theological significance to the fact that
the Bible describes the garden as apparently a specific place in
Mesopotamia if their either was no such garden or it wasn't in
Mesopotamia. This implicates our doctrine of scripture and our
hermeneutics -- for those of us from conservative evangelical
traditions, two very key theological issues we have to wrestle with.
Because it implicates our doctrine of scripture and our hermeneutics,
it also implicates our epistemology -- what specifically can we know
of God and how can we know it.

If there was no Edenic pre-fall state for humans at all, this also has
deep theological significance, because it means the Church has
misunderstood the creation-fall-redemption story for most of its
history. Not to say these things can't be discussed, but I think it's
only fair to acknowledge that they are theologically significant.

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 8:22 PM, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
> Phil -
>
> I think I've already spoken to this. In relation to your #4, it's not just
> "origins" that are dynamic, it's the whole story told in scripture, from
> Genesis through Revelation. You're focusing too narrowly on the 1st few
> chapters of the Bible.
>
> However, an abstract "dynamism" - or "prcess" some might say - isn't the
> theological center. The center is Christ, & Eph.1:10 says that the uniting
> of all things with him is God's "plan for the fullness of time." The fact
> that the Incarnation didn't take place at the beginning of creation in
> itself indicates that God never intended the world to remain in a static
> condition of perfection.
>
> As to the other points -
>
> It may have been that the first humans in a theological sense, & the first
> to sin, were a single couple but ther genetic evidence seems against it.
> But if that were to turn out to be the case it wouldn't require any
> significant changes in the model I suggested earlier. Of course it's
> natural, given their history & the traditions & sources they had, that the
> origin of humanity in the Bible is pictured as having been in Mesopotamia.
> (Though strange as it seems, conservative biblical scholars debated about
> the location of paradise - "East Prussia" is my favorite candidate.) But
> this has no theological significance.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: philtill@aol.com
> To: gmurphy@raex.com ; asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 7:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Golden Age (was Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and
> a Survey)
>
> George,
> the question this raises in my mind is what consistent hermeneutic do you
> use to determine what aspects of Genesis have "significant correspondence"
> to the scientific view of the world versus what parts of Genesis do we
> consider to be non-literal? For example,
>
> 1. Only one pair of first humans -- myth?
> 2. That it was not just a single human who went astray (read, a
> "community") -- correspondence
> 3. That the first humans were in Mesopotamia -- myth?
> 4. That origins was a dynamic process -- correspondence
>
> How do we know that the correspondence is not simply due to ad hoc
> selection? Can a consistent hermeneutic be verbalized?
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
> To: ASA list <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Mon, 5 May 2008 12:13 pm
> Subject: Golden Age (was Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a
> Survey)
>
>
> Rich Blinne wrote, "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." He's on the right track.
> Much of the discussion of "Humanity and the Fall" shows the extent to which
> the Christian tradition has bought into basically non-biblical ideas and
> thereby lost touch with one of the crucial agreements between the biblical
> view of creation and what science has been showing us.
>
> The "basically non-biblical ideas" are (1) the myth of a primordial "golden
> age" in which everything was perfect and (b) the Urzeit-Endzeit myth
> according to which everything will finally be restored to its orginal state.
>
> The "crucial agreement" is between the biblical picture of a dynamic
> creation and the scientific reality that the world is dynamic at all levels,
> ranging from elementary particles through biological evolution to the
> expansion of the universe.
>
> Explication. 1st, the Bible never speaks of a primordial golden age. It
> never says that there was no death at the beginning of creation. It never
> even says that humans would be free from all suffering, difficulties &c.
> It's significant that the more sophisticated of those who want to hold on to
> some belief in a primordial "state of integrity" have already been forced by
> what we know about the world to tone down their ideas about what that state
> was. E.g., Strimple, in the article which David O posted earlier, said that
> the 1st man was created "morally perfect in knowledge, righteousness and
> holiness." This belief in moral perfection is a comedown from what Calovius
> could say in the 17th century: "It is called a state of integrity, because
> man in it was upright and uncorrupt (Eccl.7:29) in intellect, will, the
> corporeal affecti ons and endowments, and in all things was perfect. They
> call it also the state of innocence, because he was innocent and holy, free
> from sin and pollution." (Emphasis added.)
>
> 2d, the Bible uses of the Urzeit-Endzeit motif only in the form of "broken"
> myth. In Hosea 2:14 the Urzeit is the time when God found Israel in the
> wilderness, not the beginning of the world. Revelation 21-22 certainly has
> paradisal elements but it's clear there that the Endzeit includes much more
> than the Urzeit. The final picture is not of a garden but of a city into
> which "the glory and honor of the nations" will be brought.
>
> The importance of this is that in the biblical view history matters. God
> intended the world to have a history - as Augustine expresses when he says
> that God did not make the world in time but with time. The Urzeit-Endzeit
> myth, OTOH, is essentially a denial of history. It doesn't matter because
> everything will come back to the way it was in the beginning. That's why so
> many religions have such a myth - it's a way of fleeing from what Mircea
> Eliade called "the terror of history."
>
> In the Bible, history matters. God tells humanity at the start to "be
> fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it," words that would be
> senseless if the world was supposed to remain in a state of static
> perfection. Already in the Sabbath of the 1st creation story there is a
> hint of God's goal for history. And God acts in and through historical
> events.
>
> And that picture agrees in its broad outlines with what science has shown us
> about the temporality of the world. So it's quite consistent with the that
> view of God working in history to say that God also works through natural
> processes in order to achieve his goal for creation.
>
> I'm sure that some here will be tempted to dodge the implications of what
> I've said here by
>
> A) arguing for an oil and water mixture of biological evolution with a
> miraculous creation of a first human whose moral perfection is immune from
> detection by science, thereby avoiding the idea that God works through
> natural processes, and/or
>
> B) appealing to a supposedly fundamental distinction between God's action in
> history and God's action in nature.
>
> To which I will say now that I'm proleptically unimpressed. & I'll add that
> I think it's sad for Christians to deny a significant correspondence between
> biblical and scientific pictures of the world, a correspondence that
> redounds to the credit of Christianity in relation to religions with
> basically static or cyclical views of reality.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> ________________________________
> Plan your next roadtrip with MapQuest.com: America's #1 Mapping Site.

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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