Ship of Fools: Do you believe in a "Fall"?

Thread: Do you believe in a "Fall"? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Over in Dead Horses, lilbuddha said

quote:
a "fall", as generally represented,* is no more rational or likely than Adam and Eve. This stated within the context of Christianity.

*World perfect
bad thing happens
World impperfect

and went on to claim that a doctrine of a "Fall" required an equivalent lack of

quote:
reading without a sufficiently critical eye

to the doctrine of six-day creationism.

I don't normally use the term "Fall" to describe what happened, but I certainly understand something to have happened as a result of which mankind's relationship with God suffered a critical setback, and this something to play a far more foundational and widely-accepted role in Christian doctrine than six-day creationism (which, in case of doubt, is a Dead Horse and as such not up for discussion here).

So I thought I'd find out what everybody else thought. What do you think the doctrine of the Fall is - and do you think it is the product of reading Scripture without a sufficiently critical eye?

[ 03. April 2016, 22:12: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

I believe in a figurative fall-- that the events of Gen. 1-3 describe the gap between the ideal state of humanity as intended by God and "the way things are"-- the far less than ideal state of humanity. We "fall short".

I don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve who ate a literal apple or any other sort of fruit and whose in thereby "infected" all of humanity. I believe they are a figurative representation of the state of the human condition.

From my pov, I would say those who follow a literal 6 day creation, and with it a literal Adam and Eve with a literal piece of fruit are failing to read Genesis with a sufficient "critical eye". But then, I suppose some with a different view of the inspiration of Scripture would say my less literal/ but still authoritative reading is a failure of critical reading. It's all relative.

Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on :

No I don't - it was one of the first things that made me go 'hang on a minute' about what I perceived to be shortcomings in the internal logic of Christianity when compared with what science tells us.

As I understood it (though am happy to be proved wrong or told otherwise) the Fall was seen as having an effect on the whole of creation i.e it wasn't just our sinfulness it was everything being slightly broken and wrong as a result of sin entering the world through our actions. So we once had vegetarian lions etc before we stuffed it all up.

I looked at the universe and saw this absolutely breathtakingly intricate, mind blowingly simple and yet complex vast place with such a fine balance that a few hundredths of a decimal place either way on any one of many measurements would see it unable to exist and wondered that if creation worked this well how was it broken.

I had a hard time seeing how an ape on tiny rock in orbit around a middling star in one of a billion galaxies could in any way affect that.

I certainly believe we have flaws but I don't believe we were perfect before we had those flaws. I think we've always had them and always will and our journey as a species is about learning to overcome and address those.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

Generally speaking, I think I'm pretty much on the same page as cliffdweller.

quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
As I understood it (though am happy to be proved wrong or told otherwise) the Fall was seen as having an effect on the whole of creation i.e it wasn't just our sinfulness it was everything being slightly broken and wrong as a result of sin entering the world through our actions. So we once had vegetarian lions etc before we stuffed it all up. . . .

I had a hard time seeing how an ape on tiny rock in orbit around a middling star in one of a billion galaxies could in any way affect that.

This gets at the point I alluded to in the other thread—conflating a Bronze Age understanding of "Creation" with a modern, scientific understanding of "the universe." I completely agree that the idea of vegetarian lions, or that human sin caused repercussions on how Uranus functions, is what results from a faulty attempt to force Genesis into a way-too-literal framework—and perhaps a conflation of Genesis with prophetic (and poetic) writings about the lion lying down with the lamb. It just doesn't work.

But I tend to think the original readers and audience of Genesis saw things quite differently. To them, "Creation" was essentially the Earth. Even the stars and the sun were seen as attached in some way to Earth, not as part of the much bigger universe we have some glimpse of now. If that's the "Creation" that is marred by human sin, then the effect takes on a different significance, I think. Human sin affects us not only as individuals, or even as societies—it also affects the world we inhabit. Whether it's burning or salting fields, pollution, abuse of animals, depletion of resources, or whatever, our sinfulness affects, or threatens to affect, "all of creation."

Viewed this way, it makes sense to me, and it fits with both the Genesis injunction to steward the Earth and the various references to "all creation" awaiting redemption, as well as all the parts of the Mosaic law on farming in such a way that the Earth isn't exhausted and can produce enough for all

[ 03. April 2016, 23:43: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
Human sin affects us not only as individuals, or even as societies—it also affects the world we inhabit. Whether it's burning or salting fields, pollution, abuse of animals, depletion of resources, or whatever, our sinfulness affects, or threatens to affect, "all of creation."

But this is all just the consequence of human actions. The consequence of sinning if you will. This does not illustrate, nor need at all, a "Fall". The "Fall" needs a moment in time to reference a Before and After. And this does not fit the observable world or its history. IMO, it is inconsistent with Christianity in general.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
But this is all just the consequence of human actions. The consequence of sinning if you will.

Not if those human actions are seen as more than just actions—if they are viewed as symptoms of a more pervasive condition to which all humans are in some sense captive, and for which they are in need of salvation.

Which loops us back, I guess, to the recent thread on what is meant by sin.

As for whether this idea needs a "Fall," I didn't say it did, nor did I offer it to prove that there was a Fall. I said I generally agree with cluffdweller's description of "the Fall" as figurative language. I posited this understanding of how creation is marred by sin in response to the description of the Fall involving things like vegetarian lions, simply to show there are other ways to understand what is meant by how creation is marred by sin.

[ 04. April 2016, 02:33: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I do indeed believe in the Fall--I do not think God made us this way from the beginning, to be haters and backbiters and peaceless, self-centered, unhappy people at war with each other and with ourselves. And AFAIK every major religion and culture holds that there is something wrong with us, however you call it, and whatever you attribute it to. You could almost define religion (maybe psychology and politics, too!) as an attempt to deal with that reality. That dislocation in human nature is the result of the Fall.

As for arguing about the exact details of how it happened or in what it was constituted--that's probably a Keryg topic. I do accept the Genesis account, though I know the arguments most of you will raise against it. But I'd rather have the Lord chide me for being too credulous than have him say "Why didn't you believe me?"

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
As for arguing about the exact details of how it happened or in what it was constituted--that's probably a Keryg topic. I do accept the Genesis account, though I know the arguments most of you will raise against it. But I'd rather have the Lord chide me for being too credulous than have him say "Why didn't you believe me?"

I'm sure in my case the "Why didn't you obey me?" will be so much of a concern that the "Why didn't you believe this particular bit of myth" will be well overshadowed.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
if they are viewed as symptoms of a more pervasive condition to which all humans are in some sense captive, and for which they are in need of salvation.

This requires a god who is allowing you to be punished, or at least feel the burden, of actions of someone else. Fine for Zeus or Odin, but not so much for Yahweh.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
Generally speaking, I think I'm pretty much on the same page as cliffdweller....

I completely agree that the idea of vegetarian lions, or that human sin caused repercussions on how Uranus functions, is what results from a faulty attempt to force Genesis into a way-too-literal framework—and perhaps a conflation of Genesis with prophetic (and poetic) writings about the lion lying down with the lamb. It just doesn't work.

I appreciate the shout-out, but in the interests of full disclosure, must confess that I do, actually, believe that God's original intent did in fact include "vegetarian lions"-- and possibly even "earthquake-free mountains"-- although I would reckon the emergence of non-vegetarian lions and earthquake-formed mountains far, far before the emergence of homo sapiens. I don't think it was Adam and Eve's sin that cause creation to go awry in that particular way, but I do believe it was the "corruption of creation" that happened back in the very beginning of the cosmos-- in the very first nanoseconds of the Big Bang or whatever our current theory of the origins of the universe. I am primitive enough to blame Satan for that one (***those chimes you hear are summoning Martin to come and condemn this for it's apparently blasphemous mythological lunacy***). So we cannot imagine how one could possibly have a "vegetarian lion" or an "earthquake-free mountain" since everything about a lion is made to be a predator, and the only way we know that you get a mountain is thru seismic activity. But I believe that's because we've never seen what God's original intent for creation looks like-- a non-corrupted creation.

So I don't think A&E are two individuals for are solely responsible for the "fall"-- the gap between the way things were intended and the way they are. But I think they represent that gap-- a gap that began in the first moments of the universe, but also continues to this day. So yes, the first humans (whatever version of primates first had the capacity for moral reasoning) fell, but we continued to fall, throughout every version-- thru the conquest of Canaan, and the conquest of the Americas, and the enslavement of Africans... on and on to this day. We fell, and we continue falling.

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

Human sin affects us not only as individuals, or even as societies—it also affects the world we inhabit. Whether it's burning or salting fields, pollution, abuse of animals, depletion of resources, or whatever, our sinfulness affects, or threatens to affect, "all of creation."

I would very much agree. There is no corner unaffected by human sin. But the gap between the way things are and the way they should be is not just human-choices (although you could probably lay the lion's share at our door), which is why I think there's something to the whole "creation groaning" and the "lions laying down with the lamb" stuff. There is horrific, terrible suffering that has not human cause-- horrible diseases and natural disasters and predatory stuff that is part of that "gap".

While I don't agree with Lamb's more literal reading (although mine, as I suspected, is probably also too literal-- or "naive"-- for many as well)-- I would very much agree with what she said about all world religions pointing to this. All philosophies are trying to figure out "why is it so screwed up?". There is a very real sense in which we can observe "the fall" each and every day, right outside our doors-- and inside our very hearts.

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
if they are viewed as symptoms of a more pervasive condition to which all humans are in some sense captive, and for which they are in need of salvation.
This requires a god who is allowing you to be punished, or at least feel the burden, of actions of someone else. Fine for Zeus or Odin, but not so much for Yahweh.

I think this is fair if we assume an Augustinian view of original sin as something inescapable but for which we are nonetheless punished if we don't happen to hear the gospel in a way where we can properly respond.

I don't think it fits with a broader narrative and understanding of the sin-condition or an other-than-substitutionary view of the atonement.

The fact of the matter is, the world is obviously not all good. So if God is good, then there are things that are obviously not as God intended. Again, I would agree with Lamb on this point. So once we get to that-- things are not right-- you're left with trying to explain it somehow.

I'm most drawn to an Openist pov which sees this brokenness as a result of God choosing to create a free universe-- one where we are free, and where (arguably, yes, Martin) there are other free spiritual beings. And our free choices affect things-- sometimes terribly, horrifically so. But as Nick proclaimed, God has graciously provided a way out. God is rescuing us-- rescuing all of creation-- and continuing to do so.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

The term "fall" is too mild. More like out and out rebellion.

Now, at what point did the rebellion begin? The temptation? The eating of the "forbidden fruit (whatever that could have been)?

No, it was in not owning up to what one did.

God: "Did you eat that which was forbidden?"

Man, "The woman which you gave me, made me eat of it."

God to woman: "Is that so?"

Woman: "The snake--which you created, God--enticed me."

In other words: "It is your fault, God!"

That is where the rebellion happened.

Do I believe in the Genesis story? Only as metaphor for a deeper truth.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
No I don't - it was one of the first things that made me go 'hang on a minute' about what I perceived to be shortcomings in the internal logic of Christianity when compared with what science tells us.

Your post beginning thus is a super one - spot on!

I like cliffdweller's, as always, thoughtful post too, but there is a problem in that there is no 'ideal state of humanity', and any deity is just as much a human idea. To improve the state of our own lives and that of others is of course a goal worth striving for.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I do, actually, believe that God's original intent did in fact include "vegetarian lions"-- and possibly even "earthquake-free mountains"-- although I would reckon the emergence of non-vegetarian lions and earthquake-formed mountains far, far before the emergence of homo sapiens.

A peaceful and harmonious universe is a non-existent one. Everything that is created is a result of destruction. So in your universe, we are not the flawed children of god, but the children of Satan.

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

I don't think it was Adam and Eve's sin that cause creation to go awry in that particular way, but I do believe it was the "corruption of creation" that happened back in the very beginning of the cosmos-- in the very first nanoseconds of the Big Bang or whatever our current theory of the origins of the universe.

This is essentially no different than Original Sin and has the problem I describe above.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

As with the discussion on the resurrection and Heaven, the question that (again) emerges for me in view of the posts so far is whether, or how, or the extent to which, any enduring truth in Scripture can be disentangled from its writers' cosmology.

(The view that it can't seems to be a major plank in the thinking of a lot of ex-Christians or non-Christians; I tend to think that it can).

I think I'm closest to cliffdweller on this, in that I believe the "fall" of humans was an outworking of evil already at large, although while I see something in 'creation groaning' I admit to doubts about vegetarian lions.

It seems to me that the whole Scriptural narrative revolves around the current state of humanity being imperfect compared to how it should have been in some space-time that's now wholly inaccessible to us, and the prospect of humanity being fully restored and redeemed in some space-time that we might glimpse or see through a glass darkly from time to time, but which also remains for now wholly inaccessible to us.

I see this linear progression as part of the warp and woof of the biblical narrative. If it's taken away, I personally find it really difficult to see anything anything of value left.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

I see this linear progression as part of the warp and woof of the biblical narrative. If it's taken away, I personally find it really difficult to see anything anything of value left.

I'm not attempting to devalue Christianity. Just trying to reconcile the God Christians claim to believe in with views inconsistent with that God.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

If there's no fall then there's no need for a means of salvation - hence the cross is unnecessary.

[ 04. April 2016, 06:13: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

We live in a Universe where it's very hard not to sin. We need to eat every day, we need other stuff too. And the laws of physics dictate that sometimes we'll be competing for scarce resources. What's more, our brains overrule all other thinking when we don't get what we need.

It's very difficult not to be egoistic sometimes in such a situation. We can imagine another Universe where we won't have those needs or where they're met automatically. Some people think that this is what Heaven is like. In such a situation, it is easy not to sin.

But not here. And it has always been this way. There wasn't a moment that brought this about.

Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I appreciate the shout-out, but in the interests of full disclosure, must confess that I do, actually, believe that God's original intent did in fact include "vegetarian lions"-- and possibly even "earthquake-free mountains"-- although I would reckon the emergence of non-vegetarian lions and earthquake-formed mountains far, far before the emergence of homo sapiens. I don't think it was Adam and Eve's sin that cause creation to go awry in that particular way, but I do believe it was the "corruption of creation" that happened back in the very beginning of the cosmos-- in the very first nanoseconds of the Big Bang or whatever our current theory of the origins of the universe. I am primitive enough to blame Satan for that one (***those chimes you hear are summoning Martin to come and condemn this for it's apparently blasphemous mythological lunacy***). So we cannot imagine how one could possibly have a "vegetarian lion" or an "earthquake-free mountain" since everything about a lion is made to be a predator, and the only way we know that you get a mountain is thru seismic activity. But I believe that's because we've never seen what God's original intent for creation looks like-- a non-corrupted creation.

This to me smacks horribly of a 'God of the Gaps' approach to theology.

It seems like what you are saying is that the Universe is wrong to its fabric and its our fault or the fault of sin and not the fault of the creator of the universe at all. Is that correct?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I'm with the figurative view*. Over on the Dead Horses thread I wrote:

quote:
Trying to express how Genesis gives an explanation of the beginnings of the world in a comprehensible way, along with the other creation myths around the world, I got to the Fall narrative trying to explain why a God created world is not perfect. But I realised that this opens more than the eschatology can of worms, it opens up what is meant by a creator God.

Which got missed past something that did get noticed up on.

Unpicking that thought a bit, I was trying to say that all faiths have myths about creation and a fall to try and explain how the Earth came about and why that world is not as perfect as a God-created world should be. But as Nick Tamen suggested, that confuses between evolved universe and created Earth, and the problems of agreeing a literal Creator God as depicted in the Bible with the universe of the Big Bang and the likelihood of life on other planets.

That thread also started discussing Eutychus' linear arc and eschatology. Isn't our view of the Fall, Creator God and eschatology all come into our view of God? The same sort of thing that is being argued on the liberals thread? Whether our view of God is deism, theism or panentheism? How much science we are trying build into our world view and understanding of God?

* I probably should be supporting Thunderbunk over on the liberals thread, but

I am so liberal as to be unhelpful;
that thread grewed while I was busy and although I'm trying to convince myself I need some time off I have a mountain of work to sort out, so procrastinating on threads I've been reading is rather different to catching up with a monster.

Posted by AndyHB (# 18580) on :

I think it should be remembered that the early part of Genesis (probably Chapters 1-11) dates from after the Jews' return from Babylon, and is more likely a theological treatment of the nature of the Jewish God - as compared to the nature of the Babylonian gods that those who had been in exile would have been faced with. As such, it is expressing the fact that the perfectly created, had been damaged by sin.

Posted by AndyHB (# 18580) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
So I don't think A&E are two individuals for are solely responsible for the "fall"-- the gap between the way things were intended and the way they are. But I think they represent that gap-- a gap that began in the first moments of the universe, but also continues to this day. So yes, the first humans (whatever version of primates first had the capacity for moral reasoning) fell, but we continued to fall, throughout every version-- thru the conquest of Canaan, and the conquest of the Americas, and the enslavement of Africans... on and on to this day. We fell, and we continue falling.

Biblical writers seem make it very clear that the problem has been with humanity - for instance Paul says that creation is waiting for mankind re-establish their relationship with God before creation as a whole can be renewed. It do not believe that the problems go back to the start of time, as some here seem to be suggesting.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
That thread also started discussing Eutychus' linear arc and eschatology. Isn't our view of the Fall, Creator God and eschatology all come into our view of God? The same sort of thing that is being argued on the liberals thread? Whether our view of God is deism, theism or panentheism? How much science we are trying build into our world view and understanding of God?

I have certainly been thinking along similar lines, with the possible exception of the last question.

quote:
Originally posted by AndyHB:
Paul says that creation is waiting for mankind re-establish their relationship with God before creation as a whole can be renewed.

Welcome on board!

I think (without looking) that Paul said "mankind's relationship with God to be re-established", not for "mankind to re-establish it".

quote:
It do not believe that the problems go back to the start of time, as some here seem to be suggesting.

I think there is a suggestion in the Bible that evil was around as a force in the universe before it had a moral impact on humans.

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think there is a suggestion in the Bible that evil was around as a force in the universe before it had a moral impact on humans.

There's also some ambiguity about exactly what the state of the Cosmos was outside 'the garden' proper.

Equally, it's possible that any 'Fall' worked backwards as well as forwards.

Posted by Komensky (# 8675) on :

The notion of 'The Fall' (not the band, alas): 'You are born sick and commanded to be well'. The explanation I usually heard in Charismania was that God gave us free will and we chose to rebel. This brings up questions of omniscience ('God didn't know we would do that'/'God knew we would do that'; neither are satisfactory). Moreover, I was also frequently told (and it is heard practically every week in UK Charismania) that God has always known about you since before you were born and has great plans for you (determinism). If the latter claim is true, then why was his plan for the Fall to happen anyway? The notion that the Fall happened because of free will in the context of a deterministic theology is a pretty difficult circle to square.

K.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

As others have said, I believe that humanity is fallen (indeed, falling) as we fail to live upto the ideal God has set. And, that fallenness has impacts on the rest of creation. Does that require a pre-existing perfection from which we have fallen? I don't believe so.

The most important thing about the Fall is not what we left (if indeed we did), but where we are and where we are going. We cannot change the past, but we can work towards a better future. And, in Christ, God has given us a means to rise up towards the ideal standard that we fail at on our own. Rather than dwelling on the past, the gospel call is to look forward in hope of a re-creation in which the imperfections of the here and now are healed.

I find value in the concept that God is still creating the heavens and the earth, and that he has chosen to let the free agents present within that ongoing creation to participate in the process. The end of the day, when God declares everything good and very good is in our future, not our past. The day when humanity is created in the image of God is when we are raised in the image of Christ.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Komensky: I feel your pain; I think the positive concept missing from your thumbnail sketch is grace.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
we are raised in the image of Christ.

Raised as in life-after-death resurrected, or not?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

I'm agnostic on life-after-death. But, in Christ we are empowered to live a new life today, in the here and now, and to work towards redeeming the whole of creation. To work for peace and justice today, to work towards reconciling all things to God in Christ in the present world we have been entrusted with.

So, maybe there is a life-after-death resurrection. But, there certainly is new life in Christ today, and the call to live that new life today.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The problem with focusing on life after death and the resurrection of all things to come is that it can mean that we ignore any need to create the Kingdom on Earth now. Isn't that what the Fall is about? That creation is flawed and we should be striving to improve things?

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I find value in the concept that God is still creating the heavens and the earth, and that he has chosen to let the free agents present within that ongoing creation to participate in the process. The end of the day, when God declares everything good and very good is in our future, not our past. The day when humanity is created in the image of God is when we are raised in the image of Christ.

Yes - notions of 'the fall' are very Augustinian. I prefer Irenaeus's idea that the world isn't finished uyet - we are still evolving and that explains why things go wrong.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The problem with focusing on life after death and the resurrection of all things to come is that it can mean that we ignore any need to create the Kingdom on Earth now. Isn't that what the Fall is about? That creation is flawed and we should be striving to improve things?

Increasingly, I think you're on to something seeing the "linear arc and eschatology" as a watershed in terms of approaches and concepts.

I agree that the danger of futurist eschatology (and of an over-emphasis on the "Fall") is neglecting the here and now, but I think it is a danger only if the idea is pushed to the extreme.

The paradigm I'm most familiar with sees the Church age as being in tension between "now and the not yet". Morally, the human condition is, I think, pretty much unchanged through the ages; certainly, I see the same sort of problems in the families of the patriarchs in Genesis as one can find today.

As said on the DH thread, the result for me is working towards accommodation and compromise in an attitude of grace, whilst living in hope of a fuller and more complete resolution when all things are made new.

(One of the major insights for me of these discussions is that a fully realised eschatology might have much less room for compromise, because the only chance for success is in the here and now. And be still less compromising if it's thought there's nothing inherently flawed in the human condition to start with.)

The more I think about it, the harder I find it to see anything in Scirpture other than a beginning, a middle - with a crisis in every sense of the term, the incarnation/death/resurrection/ascension of Christ, in the middle of the middle - and a future end.

The idea of hope itself seems inextricably bound up with that progression to me. Not only do I find it really really intellectually difficult to imagine the narrative making any sense without that linearity (and symmetry), I find it really difficult to imagine any source of hope.

[ 04. April 2016, 14:52: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :

quote:

originally posted by Curiosity Killed

The problem with focusing on life after death and the resurrection of all things to come is that it can mean that we ignore any need to create the Kingdom on Earth now.

You say that like it's a bad thing ...

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

And you think it isn't?

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

If we assume that, historically speaking, ambiguity we will always have with us... does that change things?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

Sin and the Fall are separation from God, and are therefore their own punishment. I maintain this is a perfectly Augustinian position to hold.

That all creation is originally good is fundamental to Christian theology. That all creation is in bondage to sin and in need of liberation is there in Paul. As God is outside time, I think it possible that the fall of sentient beings in general can separate the universe from God throughout all time.
Not that I believe that at any state temporally or cross-temporally there were only two humans involved or an unusually articulate snake.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I do, actually, believe that God's original intent did in fact include "vegetarian lions"-- and possibly even "earthquake-free mountains"-- although I would reckon the emergence of non-vegetarian lions and earthquake-formed mountains far, far before the emergence of homo sapiens.
A peaceful and harmonious universe is a non-existent one. Everything that is created is a result of destruction. So in your universe, we are not the flawed children of god, but the children of Satan..

No. We were created by God, in the image of God. So we are still children of God. But we have been affected both by our own choices and (IMHO) by the choices of Satan and other spiritual forces. That "corruption" has impacted us by, among other things, marring or distorting the image of God-- but that is different than destroying the image of God. It does not make us children of Satan, but it does mean that we are not isolated islands either. We have been impacted by our own sin, by other people's sins, by Satan and things like Wink's "myth/cycle of redemptive violence".

quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I appreciate the shout-out, but in the interests of full disclosure, must confess that I do, actually, believe that God's original intent did in fact include "vegetarian lions"-- and possibly even "earthquake-free mountains"-- although I would reckon the emergence of non-vegetarian lions and earthquake-formed mountains far, far before the emergence of homo sapiens. I don't think it was Adam and Eve's sin that cause creation to go awry in that particular way, but I do believe it was the "corruption of creation" that happened back in the very beginning of the cosmos-- in the very first nanoseconds of the Big Bang or whatever our current theory of the origins of the universe. I am primitive enough to blame Satan for that one (***those chimes you hear are summoning Martin to come and condemn this for it's apparently blasphemous mythological lunacy***). So we cannot imagine how one could possibly have a "vegetarian lion" or an "earthquake-free mountain" since everything about a lion is made to be a predator, and the only way we know that you get a mountain is thru seismic activity. But I believe that's because we've never seen what God's original intent for creation looks like-- a non-corrupted creation.
This to me smacks horribly of a 'God of the Gaps' approach to theology.

It seems like what you are saying is that the Universe is wrong to its fabric and its our fault or the fault of sin and not the fault of the creator of the universe at all. Is that correct?

I think you're misusing the term. To some degree all theology, and indeed all scholarship, is a "God of the gaps" theology. There are gaps in our knowledge obviously, and we as humans try to "fill in those gaps" by figuring out what we don't know. "God of the gaps" is usually used to describe a fallacious argument style where the arguer suggests that the mere fact that there are gaps is proof of God-- we don't know how this happened or that happened, therefore there must be a God. I'm not doing that. Rather, I'm trying to do what all religions, philosophies, and even science does-- figure out "why things are the way they are". You may find my hypotheses implausible or unsatisfactory, but the fact that I'm attempting to understand why things are the way they are is not in and of itself a "God of the gaps" argument.

I am saying there is something wrong with the universe, or at least with our world. Again, I believe this is obvious. As Lamb already pointed out, this is one commonality between virtually every religion and philosophy-- that things are seriously messed up. The question is why.

Really, there are only a few possibilities:
1. God is good, and evil/suffering is an illusion, or doesn't matter in the so-called "big picture". I think this is an insult to those who suffer.
2. God is not good
3. God is good in the broad general sense but doesn't really care about our individual lives (making "good" a very relative term)
4. There is no God

or, what I am arguing for:
5. God is good, and is not responsible for the evil we see/experience.

#5 is the tradition Christian worldview, but I think has gotten mucked up by Augustine & Calvin-- who seem to ping pong between #5 and #1 in a way that makes we want to throw up my hands and say they're sounding a lot like #2-- God is not good.

IMHO, the only logical way to argue #5 is the Open view that God created a world that was good and perfect, but was also free. Where humans are free but also where there are other free creatures (probably spiritual beings). God did this because God values most of all love, and love must be free to be real. In a world that is free, God cannot determine (although he can anticipate and plan for) the free choices made by free creatures. Those choices impact them (i.e. our sin impacts us) but also others (e.g. other's choices impact us, including choices made by Satan or other free spiritual beings)-- because we are not isolated autonomous units but are interrelated beings.

I think makes the best sense of what has been revealed to us in Scripture (which I believe to be true) and what we can observe empirically of the world around us.

This is not the same as "original sin" as articulated by Augustine. Augustine would see original sin as deriving from two particular individual ancestors, which "stains" us from birth with guilt. We are guilty because of someone else's sin. To Augustine, we are incapable of choosing anything other than sin, and yet we are condemned even before we choose sin, by that sin and the sin of our ancestors. It is part of the way God created us. This is not what I believe and why I say Augustine, while saying he's arguing for #1 and #5 really sounds a lot more like #2. To me there is nothing good in that "good news".

I believe we are impacted by other people's sins, but we are not guilty because of them. We are guilty of our own free choices, not our ancestor's. Again, I read Gen. 3 as a figurative story-- a parable that helps explain "why things are the way they are." I would agree with another poster that it appears to have been written as a response/rebuke to the Babylonian creation myths.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

fyi: that last part re original sin flows from my response to Macrina but also responds to this question:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
]Originally posted by cliffdweller:

I don't think it was Adam and Eve's sin that cause creation to go awry in that particular way, but I do believe it was the "corruption of creation" that happened back in the very beginning of the cosmos-- in the very first nanoseconds of the Big Bang or whatever our current theory of the origins of the universe.

This is essentially no different than Original Sin and has the problem I describe above. [/QUOTE]

Long appts this morning, then trying to catch up late in the day from the left coast to what you've all were discussing while I was sleeping... On the flip side, now y'all will be sleeping while I'm yammering on and on...

[ 04. April 2016, 21:02: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by AndyHB:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
So I don't think A&E are two individuals for are solely responsible for the "fall"-- the gap between the way things were intended and the way they are. But I think they represent that gap-- a gap that began in the first moments of the universe, but also continues to this day. So yes, the first humans (whatever version of primates first had the capacity for moral reasoning) fell, but we continued to fall, throughout every version-- thru the conquest of Canaan, and the conquest of the Americas, and the enslavement of Africans... on and on to this day. We fell, and we continue falling.
Biblical writers seem make it very clear that the problem has been with humanity - for instance Paul says that creation is waiting for mankind re-establish their relationship with God before creation as a whole can be renewed. It do not believe that the problems go back to the start of time, as some here seem to be suggesting.

Obviously I disagree. In particular, I disagree with your introductory thesis that the Bible makes this "very clear."

Yes, the Bible is clear that human sin is primarily responsible for the human condition, which is why I said we have the "lion's share" of the responsibility. But the Bible also talks about what I've mentioned-- the "groaning of creation"-- the way creation itself has been impacted, in ways that sound far more expansive (although global warming does indicate human activity to be, yes, pretty expansive...)

Yes, if you take Gen. 3 literally then the Fall only goes back as far as the first two humans. But if you take it figuratively, as I do, it is describing the human condition. And prophesies like "the lion laying down with the lamb" suggest there is something wrong with aspects of creation itself (the food chain itself, the need for predators to prey on the weak, the "red in tooth & claw" aspects) which cannot be laid at humanity's door. This coincides with our experience, where there is suffering (childhood diseases, birth defects, natural disasters) that similarly cannot be laid at the door of human choices.

It is convenient to lay the explanation for all the evil in the world at the feet of "free will"-- and indeed, much of it can and will stick. But not all of it. So any explanation that wants to seriously address the problem of evil has to go beyond that to address the problem of natural evil as well.

Martin, however, will join you in your dismay at my talk of Satan and minions and other such primitive notions...

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I find value in the concept that God is still creating the heavens and the earth, and that he has chosen to let the free agents present within that ongoing creation to participate in the process. The end of the day, when God declares everything good and very good is in our future, not our past. The day when humanity is created in the image of God is when we are raised in the image of Christ.
Yes - notions of 'the fall' are very Augustinian. I prefer Irenaeus's idea that the world isn't finished uyet - we are still evolving and that explains why things go wrong.

This is closer to what I'm suggesting. It fits well with inaugurated theology... the notion that the Kingdom of God is both "now" and "not yet." In this in-between era we can see glimpses of what we were meant to be but were never able to be-- but in that glimpses of what we will one day become, through God's grace. "We" meaning all of humanity but also all of creation-- the new heaven and new earth.

[ 04. April 2016, 21:14: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Still working my way through all that's been said while I've been sleeping/working here in lala land. Perhaps instead of yammering on I should have just started and ended with this:

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

I find value in the concept that God is still creating the heavens and the earth, and that he has chosen to let the free agents present within that ongoing creation to participate in the process. The end of the day, when God declares everything good and very good is in our future, not our past. The day when humanity is created in the image of God is when we are raised in the image of Christ.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

Can I ask you the same question I asked Alan?

For the avoidance of doubt (again), this is not some sort of orthodoxy test, this is me trying to be sure of what you're agreeing with.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

6. God is love. Love hurts.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
6. God is love. Love hurts.

Yes. Although I'd say #6 is really just the working out of #5.

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

Can I ask you the same question I asked Alan?

For the avoidance of doubt (again), this is not some sort of orthodoxy test, this is me trying to be sure of what you're agreeing with.

to keep continuity, here's the question:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Komensky: I feel your pain; I think the positive concept missing from your thumbnail sketch is grace.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
we are raised in the image of Christ.
Raised as in life-after-death resurrected, or not?

Yes, I do believe in life-after-death resurrection, which should surprise exactly no one-- I'm pretty solidly evangelical in my beliefs. But I do believe the transformation that Alan is talking about is more than just that. Really, the resurrection is just the extension of what has come before-- just as Christ's resurrected body bore some continuity as well as some differentiation with what his incarnate body/life was like. So I believe the transformation Alan is talking about both in us and in creation is ongoing. In humanity we would describe it as "sanctification." In creation/society/the world as a whole we might describe it as "kingdom activity". Just as we see signs of the "old age"-- the world as corrupted by sin and Satan (signs like genocide, disease, abuse, decay and death), so we see signs of the Kingdom to come-- both in humanity and in the world (love, compassion, courage, restoration). So we don't just sit back and wait for the "new earth" and letting the planet go to hell-- because this IS our now and future home. Rather we are active participants now in anticipating the life of the Kingdom and leaning into the life to come.

[ 04. April 2016, 21:51: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

No it isn't. God is FULLY responsible. Not a super-Satan.

[ 04. April 2016, 21:56: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I'm agnostic on life-after-death. But, in Christ we are empowered to live a new life today, in the here and now, and to work towards redeeming the whole of creation. To work for peace and justice today, to work towards reconciling all things to God in Christ in the present world we have been entrusted with.

So, maybe there is a life-after-death resurrection. But, there certainly is new life in Christ today, and the call to live that new life today.

We should live as if there were only today. Only now. As there will always will be.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
No it isn't. God is FULLY responsible. Not a super-Satan.

Ah, I was wondering what was taking you so long-- had me worried!
[Biased]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Fret not, your graciousness can't stop me.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
As for arguing about the exact details of how it happened or in what it was constituted--that's probably a Keryg topic. I do accept the Genesis account, though I know the arguments most of you will raise against it. But I'd rather have the Lord chide me for being too credulous than have him say "Why didn't you believe me?"
I'm sure in my case the "Why didn't you obey me?" will be so much of a concern that the "Why didn't you believe this particular bit of myth" will be well overshadowed.

We've got all eternity for uncomfortable conversations. Although, thank God, I have reason to hope that his passion and resurrection will cover all my screw-ups and take the sting out of interacting with him!

Besides, isn't this rather like the typical parental "Why did you do that?" which gets shouted after one crashes the car, stays out all night, steals from a store, etc. etc. etc. The only answer ("because I fucked up") is precisely the one they know already and don't want to hear again, and will probably belt you for repeating.

I live in hope that God is more intelligent than to ask those sort of questions.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Besides, isn't this rather like the typical parental "Why did you do that?" which gets shouted after one crashes the car, stays out all night, steals from a store, etc. etc. etc. The only answer ("because I fucked up") is precisely the one they know already and don't want to hear again, and will probably belt you for repeating.

I live in hope that God is more intelligent than to ask those sort of questions.

I am reminded of the story told by C.S. Lewis about Joy Gresham's cat, which of course came to join his household. It was not supposed to be in his study, apparently, and so it leapt in through the window. It landed on a pile of papers on his desk, skidded across the desk, and plopped onto the floor. And immediately began grooming of course.

Lewis's response could have been as you described. What he said was, "Would my stepcat like a saucer of milk?"

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

Augustine. He's to blame for this isn't he? Some mixture of trying to explain himself to himself, and trying to justify structures of the nascent church. The Fall condemns people before they are born. Pious and harmful nonsense if taken literally and semi-literally.

Humans are not by nature evil. I've held children as they are born, and held older people as they died. Neither is evil by definition. Christian or any other religion. Rather people are capable of both good and evil. You'd think we might have figured this out by now, given the burnings in the middle ages, rape by clergy scandals, etc within churches, and things like wars and random murder-terror outside. Evil is just part of our potential. We don't need a fall to explain it. Built into us as part of who we are. DNA. We can be good.

Better to consider that we have co-evolved with all of the other life and that we have the possibility to avoiding our animal nature "red in tooth and claw" and behave with charity toward each other. Though we seem capable only of doing this on a one-to-one basis or in small groups.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

no prophet - I'd query your assertion that humans are not by their nature evil. This BBC article discusses the evolution of evil by looking at evil behaviour in the animal kingdom. The conclusion is that animals show all of the Dark Tetrad and all of these may have evolutionary advantages.

[ 05. April 2016, 05:45: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I hope He WILL ask. For that way we'll learn.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

It is interesting how those who want to hold to some sort of fall event, end up suggesting things like a fall that happened just after the Big Bang or that the influence of our disobedience could go backwards as well as forwards!

They also want to try to hold onto ideas like vegetarian lions! Doesn't this all feel a little desperate? It seems incredibly hard work, holding on to ideas that 'once upon a time everything wasn't messed up.' Even though *all* the evidence shows a universe that was tough and brutal from the start.

Eutychus - I understand that there is a coherence to the traditional take, but I am surprised you resort so readily to that perspective, when you imply that you can also see that the (scientific) evidence is deeply problematic.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Cliffdweller - I am unpersuaded that you get round this problem and that it is Augustine's and Calvin's fault. Your use of a devil to blame I don't think works. Well it does superficially as long as that line is only pursued so far.

Those, I used to know, who used a similar argument about free will and the devil to square this particular circle always hit problems. They believed God was omnipotent and omniscient and that Satan' power was only as great as God allowed. They also believed that Satan's evil influence would be dealt with in the end.

They also believed that in heaven would we have a loving relationship with God - free will without all the pain.

So to summarise God is quite happy for Satan to have significant influence even though he could be dealt with. Also, presumably, Satan isn't necessary for meaningful relationships and free will.

Now you might square those circles slightly differently but for the life of me I don't see how God is not responsible for the harshness of life in earth. He seems very willing (happy) to sustain a pretty harsh universe. I think we should learn to deal with this.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Eutychus - I understand that there is a coherence to the traditional take

At last! Somebody concedes I might not be completely out of my mind [Big Grin]

quote:
but

quote:
I am surprised you resort so readily to that perspective, when you imply that you can also see that the (scientific) evidence is deeply problematic.

I've been considering Macrina's "God of the gaps" challenge, even before it was raised.

To be frank, the scientific objections just sort of pour off me like water off a duck's back. This might be for a number of reasons (or a combination thereof):

(i) I'm too cowardly to face the evidence, and so take refuge in my primitive beliefs

(ii) My arts background means I just don't understand the science enough for it to have an impact

(iii) My arts background means that while I'm appreciative of science, I'm suspicious of scientific hubris (the idea that "modern science" has definitively "explained" things when what we really have is useful models (albeit increasingly refined ones); there's plenty of evidence of scientific hubris down the ages to point to)

(iv) I find the narrative explanation compelling not just intellectually but emotionally and spiritually in a way that to me, seems to encompass the human dimension in a way that scientific explanations don't*.

I think the way the Bible tells things (Eden...) just isn't designed to address the kind of questions science wants to ask (diet of lions in Eden) but that doesn't detract from its truth - or mean it's not rooted in something that happened at a point in time.

That "linear arc" component, as CK has dubbed it, is to my mind foundational to the truth of the thing; my thinking about the incarnation and everything following on from it is along similar lines: something of spiritual significance, beyond the realm of scientific explanation, happened in time and physical space; if it didn't, then there's nothing significant there at all.

==

*this may sound cheesy, but on Sunday morning, furtively checking the Ship on my smartphone during church, the significance of worship came home to me. If it's all just cold rationality, worship goes. And "without worship you shrink, it's as brutal as that" (Equus).

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

No I don't believe in a 'fall'. I see our sinfulness and shortcomings as a 'failure to become'.

A failure to become fully human, compassionate, kind.

We all fall short ocasionally, our animal, selfish nature inevitably (and sometimes essentially) kicks in from time to time.

[ 05. April 2016, 09:38: Message edited by: Boogie ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

'Failure'?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Augustine. He's to blame for this isn't he? Some mixture of trying to explain himself to himself, and trying to justify structures of the nascent church. The Fall condemns people before they are born. Pious and harmful nonsense if taken literally and semi-literally.

Humans are not by nature evil. I've held children as they are born, and held older people as they died. Neither is evil by definition. Christian or any other religion. Rather people are capable of both good and evil. You'd think we might have figured this out by now, given the burnings in the middle ages, rape by clergy scandals, etc within churches, and things like wars and random murder-terror outside. Evil is just part of our potential. We don't need a fall to explain it. Built into us as part of who we are. DNA. We can be good.

Better to consider that we have co-evolved with all of the other life and that we have the possibility to avoiding our animal nature "red in tooth and claw" and behave with charity toward each other. Though we seem capable only of doing this on a one-to-one basis or in small groups.

It's not "evil by definition." More like "made wholly good and then got partially fucked up somehow," leaving us a complicated mixture of awesome and awful. It is not true human nature to be what we are now. It is human nature with a screw-up superimposed--or to change the metaphor, with an infection that is skewing things, and needs healing. Nobody was born evil. Everybody (bar Jesus) is born infected, and in need of help to get back to real human nature.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Somehow how?

[ 05. April 2016, 12:26: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
It is human nature with a screw-up superimposed--or to change the metaphor, with an infection that is skewing things, and needs healing. Nobody was born evil. Everybody (bar Jesus) is born infected, and in need of help to get back to real human nature.

Yes, that is how I see it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Infected with what?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Cliffdweller - I am unpersuaded that you get round this problem and that it is Augustine's and Calvin's fault. Your use of a devil to blame I don't think works. Well it does superficially as long as that line is only pursued so far.

...Now you might square those circles slightly differently but for the life of me I don't see how God is not responsible for the harshness of life in earth. He seems very willing (happy) to sustain a pretty harsh universe. I think we should learn to deal with this.

To some extent I would agree. This is a problem we all struggle with, and ultimately have to land on one of the unsatisfying options I laid out, none of which really deals with the problem. You can walk away (say there is no God), you can chalk it up to "mystery" (which I think distances us from God), or you can choose an unsatisfactory answer that leaves you itching for something more.

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:

Those, I used to know, who used a similar argument about free will and the devil to square this particular circle always hit problems. They believed God was omnipotent and omniscient and that Satan' power was only as great as God allowed. They also believed that Satan's evil influence would be dealt with in the end.

They also believed that in heaven would we have a loving relationship with God - free will without all the pain.

So to summarise God is quite happy for Satan to have significant influence even though he could be dealt with. Also, presumably, Satan isn't necessary for meaningful relationships and free will.

Now you might square those circles slightly differently but for the life of me I don't see how God is not responsible for the harshness of life in earth. He seems very willing (happy) to sustain a pretty harsh universe. I think we should learn to deal with this.

The Open view would differ from this by not feeling bound to omnipotence and omniscience as essential characteristics of God. God's only defining essential characteristic is love-- the omnis are attributes but not essential characteristics (I think Phil. 2 supports this).

So love is the only essential, and love must be free, otherwise it's not love. So God creates free creatures-- not as a capricious choice, but because it is the only way to love. We are free, and arguably Satan and his minions are free. God is not "outside of time" but is inside time as we are inside time-- either by choice or by logical essence-- the only way to be in communion with a temporal creature is to be in time. So, if we are truly free and God is in time, then logically God cannot definitively know the future choices of those free creatures. God can anticipate and plan for every potential future choice-- which is what prophesy is, and why he is able to promise a future world where things will be different.

I believe God created the best possible world given those realities. And I believe a big (perhaps primary) purpose of this world is to learn-- to give us a true, real vision of what our choice truly is-- what it looks like to live life on our own terms and what it looks like to live life on God's terms-- the way we learn everything, thru trial & error. So that ultimately we can freely, knowingly choose if we wish to live in God's Kingdom or not. I don't think that necessarily excludes non-Christians because I don't think that choice comes in this life, but in the next-- when we see things clearly.

All of which does not, as you already pointed out "square all the circles". I wish it did. But for me, it squares more circles than I've been able to find anywhere else-- including the "walk away and give up on God" and the "mystery" options.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

The detail is in the Devil.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Pity nobody picked up on Boogie's contribution. She is right. One Biblical word for 'sin' can be translated as "missing the mark" -- as in an arrow falling short of its target. Paul had this in mind when he wrote to the Romans and said "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
Jesus is the proto-type of what we can be and are meant to be. He alone was fully human. Compared to Him we have all fallen short. Therefore Paul could say "all have sinned".

Irenaus ( I think it was) who said " he became what we are in order that we might become what He is."

We would be better off spending less time on berating people for their sins ( and 'fallenness') and more time offering them the possibility of becoming.

God, through the Holy Spirit, enables us to become what we are meant to be.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
Irenaus ( I think it was) who said " he became what we are in order that we might become what He is."

Dunno about Irenaeus, but Athanasius said "God became man that man might become God."

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

To clarify my thoughts - I don't disagree with Curiosity and Lamb: I think we have both evil and good potential. Both. We are not defined by the Fall and an evil nature. Nor are we defined by the Jesus example and a good nature. Neither is the default. We have to choose, both in our daily decisions, and for the general direction of our whole lives. I think we humans are all of us capable of horrible nightmares and beautiful dreams, even when we have made the general choice for one or the other. Potential is always both directions.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Still working my way through all that's been said while I've been sleeping/working here in lala land. Perhaps instead of yammering on I should have just started and ended with this:

I'm glad you didn't! I have been reading through latest posts and, as always, find what you say most interesting and thoughtful, even though I am a non-believer.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Infected with what?

The natural and understandable inclination to pay more attention to physical things than spiritual ones.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

That's a problem how? And what's it got to do with kindness?

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

Being thirsty and getting a drink of water is physical. Seeing a stranger who is thirsty and giving them a drink of water out of kindness is spiritual.

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

I don't believe in a literal Fall. It's quite obvious that death existed long before human sin. It's rather more of a failure to rise. At some point in human evolution our ancestors developed the imagination to stand outside themselves and realise that all their actions have consequences, sometimes unpleasant, for others. They also began to contemplate their origins, their destiny and their Creator. All of which left them with a knowledge, as it still does for us today, that we don't always live up to our highest ideals. That is our fall.

With that in mind, I don't see the Incarnation as being primarily about saving us from this fallen state, but more about lifting us closer to the state we should be in. It's about Christ uniting the human nature to the divine, and lifting our humanity into the Godhead. This may well be another step on the road of our evolution as creatures who co-operate with God in His creation. Though Christ's work is complete, it's far from complete in most of us as individuals, but He takes us by the hand and leads us.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Being thirsty and getting a drink of water is physical. Seeing a stranger who is thirsty and giving them a drink of water out of kindness is spiritual.

Yes! That's what it has to do with kindness.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

WHAT failure? Whose?

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Eutychus - your view of science is actually a great deal more negative than I thought it would be.

We could explore in detail the idea of consilience - where multiple strands of evidence all point in the same direction. I.e. areas that are much more likely to be refined than completely overturned.

Or your comments re scientific hubris. In my view science is a lot more interested in overturning / correcting erroneous past conclusions than traditional Christian theology. (Or to put it another way, I think inherent in its own way of working is a greater awareness of its tendency towards confirmation bias.)

But in the end this may well be like water off a ducks back - as you said!

In the end the problem I see in your approach is that anyone who is persuaded by the science, will really struggle to buy into your take on the Christian gospel.

[ 05. April 2016, 22:10: Message edited by: Luigi ]

Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No I don't believe in a 'fall'. I see our sinfulness and shortcomings as a 'failure to become'.

A failure to become fully human, compassionate, kind.

We all fall short ocasionally, our animal, selfish nature inevitably (and sometimes essentially) kicks in from time to time.

I tend to follow this line, as well.

The basic "facts" of life are these:

a) The world is an imperfect, flawed place where pain, corruption and sorrow are frequently found.

b) Each of us - if we admit it - know that we are imperfect, flawed people. We are not the people we know we could be. We do things we know we shouldn't. We fail to act in the ways we know we should.

c) Despite these deep flaws in our world and in ourselves, we retain a vision of a better world and of ourselves as better people. (I would say that this persisting vision comes from God)

It seems to me that God's work in our world and in us all is to rescue us from the pain of our failures and to help transform us into the vision of our "new selves".

A concept of a "Fall" obscures all this, I think. At one and the same time it absolves us from blame ("I couldn't help myself - I've inherited my fallen nature from Adam & Eve.") whilst denying the possibility of real change ("Why bother trying to be different? You will always be a fallen sinner.")

Each of us is born with huge potential - for good and for evil. Hitler could have been a saint and Mother Teresa could have been a cruel bastard.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Still working my way through all that's been said while I've been sleeping/working here in lala land. Perhaps instead of yammering on I should have just started and ended with this:
I'm glad you didn't! I have been reading through latest posts and, as always, find what you say most interesting and thoughtful, even though I am a non-believer.

Ah, now I'm feeling badly for being snappish with you on the other thread. Which is not unrelated to the fall, and sin & salvation, and the work of the Spirit in convicting us of sin...

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

I cannot believe in a fall in any biblically meaningful way. Until someone can explain to me how death entered creation because of human sin, I simply cannot. What I think a lot of people fail to see is that it requires us to do away with most of St Paul's soteriology: 'since by man came death by man came also the resurrection... etc' and his idea that sinlessness means immortality. What was once the heart of so many Christian theologies is not working anymore now. I think evangelicalism is doomed because of this.

[ 06. April 2016, 01:11: Message edited by: Joesaphat ]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Luigi, thanks for your response. It's less that my view of science is negative than that I seem impervious to it challenging my core spiritual beliefs, I think, as it doesn't scratch the right itches. Fair point about this working both ways, though.

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
What was once the heart of so many Christian theologies is not working anymore now. I think evangelicalism is doomed because of this.

But the numbers right now, worldwide, seem to be saying the opposite. Evangelicalism seems to be the part of the church that's growing, most of all in emerging nations. I'm simply noting that a lot of people seem not to be too worried about holding to Paul's soteriology despite (or as well as) what science is telling them.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Evangelicalism has always (for better or worse) been open to re-invention. And that is certainly happening now, as we have begun exploring different theological paradigms (including Open Theism), some of which have different understandings of "original sin", the fall and atonement.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Agreed. But as posted earlier, I don't know of anywhere in evangelicalism (in my neck of the woods, at least, bearing in mind it's not English-speaking) that doesn't subscribe to some form of linearity in the biblical narrative: that not only will there be an "end" (a resurrection leading to some form of life after death), there was a "beginning" when things were not as they are now, in the "middle".

Evangelicals may think Paul's soteriology was something that can be diversely re-interpreted, but they don't think they can simply disregard it entirely. And I tend to think Jesus talked in terms of a beginning, middle and end too. It was a challenge to that assertion that got this thread started.

[ 06. April 2016, 05:52: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Sure, but "beginning, middle and end" doesn't have to equate with "Augustine's version of original sin". There's room for a broader, more figurative understanding of the Fall.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Sure, but "beginning, middle and end" doesn't have to equate with "Augustine's version of original sin". There's room for a broader, more figurative understanding of the Fall.

I agree with that, which is why I put "Fall" in scare quotes and kept lilbuddha's original, pithy summary.

The core aspect to my mind (and primarily in the context of the original DH discussion) is that the current state of affairs (i.e. the human condition) is, to borrow Jesus' words, "not as it was in the beginning".

Not a few people seem to disagree with that (the idea that there was a "beginning" after which things were different for humans), but I'm having difficulty understanding how their views interact (other than simply saying "well, that's obviously rubbish, we know better now") with what I see as intrinsic to the Bible narrative of there being an eschatalogical beginning, middle, and future end.

Personally, I keep trying thought experiments with such "non-linear" views, but I just can't make them work for me and set any store by the Bible at all (which is sort of where Eliab started the DH thread).

[ 06. April 2016, 06:07: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Conservatism as evangelicalism is a function of minimal western materialism. So it will grow in the developing world. It can't grow where it already exists as Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism: religious culture.

It can't be sustained beyond minimal materialism. The lower middle class. Its abandonment is a direct function of education.

Jesus, being a man of His time, 100%, knew nothing of human origin, as conservatives here still choose to.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I think that those Biblical narratives in Genesis are trying to understand the world as it is to those peoples (skating rapidly over the several different accounts and times). That includes how the world came about and why something created by God is not perfect. Figurative explanations for something incomprehensible - finding patterns or making sense of our world being a human trait.

A linearity in the Biblical account is a way of making sense of that collection of books. It may well have been the understanding of those who collected those particular books together (and not others). (I am sure someone will come along and give me chapter and verse on the views of whichever Council chose which books.)

If we weren't presented with this collection of books as the Bible, would we really try to build patterns out of it? I fell badly out of love with this approach after discussing Joshua and Judges with one of my more fundamentalist friends, who was sure it was God's will that those genocides had to happen.

(I'm another one who's agnostic about life after death. I'll try to formulate a question on that one, before burying myself back into work. Today I am working from home so can procrastinate to a degree.)

But it does start begging the question, what message do we get from the Bible if we cannot make sense of it? What do we base our religion on?

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Cliffdweller and Eutychus I'll try to answer you both.

CD - thanks for the reply. I knew I shouldn't have mentioned omniscience. I know your take on open theism and I am largely sympathetic to it. It is certainly preferable to Calvinism but it only makes a marginal difference (very marginal) to my main problem which you left largely unaddressed.

The whole idea that we have to have a groaning struggling creation (death, red in tooth and claw, pain, very little clarity about God etc) or free loving relationships would not be possible, is really depressing. The idea that this is the best universe God could come up with is hardly reassuring!

Eutychus - my point from the beginning has been that just moving from a fall event to a figurative fall isn't IMV a get out of gaol free card. To continue to cohere other aspects of faith are impacted. This I think we agree on.

However, if I can hold on to a faith that is based *on the Christian faith then it would have to deal with a whole load of significant problems other than the fall. So I am happy (need) to let go of a good 5 of the seven atonement theories - depending on how you count these things. The difference between a God who had to die and a God who came close and was willing to die, is massive for me.

Fulfilling sacrificial law is not tenable for me whereas deconstructing sacrificial logic - a la Rene Girard I can buy and is IMV very illuminating. Defending the many horrendous OT passages (and some NT passages) is equally not viable, so a belief system that accepts we need to 'go against the text' is also essential.

The fact that at least this position doesn't have to deny 95% of Biology, cosmology and anthropology is helpful IMV. So yes I have let go of quite a bit but then much of the more traditional narrative reads like magic realism to me. Beautifully written in places and it has a coherent narrative arc, the only problem is it lacks even the faintest whiff of credibility!

* Please note I said 'based on the Christian faith' not 'in the Christian fath' - the difference is important.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Eutychus - my point from the beginning has been that just moving from a fall event to a figurative fall isn't IMV a get out of gaol free card. To continue to cohere other aspects of faith are impacted. This I think we agree on.

Yes, definitely, you have put the finger on my angst very accurately, and I can't resolve this satisfactorily.

quote:
Please note I said 'based on the Christian faith' not 'in the Christian fath' - the difference is important.

Um, OK, but you're way over my head here. Right now this discussion is very much revolving around the issues I'm grappling with, but I'm not sure I have the tools to do so, nor do I have the time they deserve at present. It is at least helping me to have some idea of where other people are coming from with regard to the issues.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

I think this just shows the divide between those who believe that the natural way of things for humans is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (as per Hobbes) or that one thinks that - in general - by nature humans are co-operative and social (kind of argued by Hume and others).

I appreciate that this is a philosophical way to approach this issue, but it seems to me that the way one understands the fall will inevitably colour the way you think things happen in the world - ie whether things are naturally bad, with occasional sparks of goodness influenced by the divine or things are generally good with occasional black deeds by deranged individuals.

Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that things tend towards chaos, particularly within human institutions.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Luigi, thanks for your response. It's less that my view of science is negative than that I seem impervious to it challenging my core spiritual beliefs, I think, as it doesn't scratch the right itches. Fair point about this working both ways, though.
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
What was once the heart of so many Christian theologies is not working anymore now. I think evangelicalism is doomed because of this.
But the numbers right now, worldwide, seem to be saying the opposite. Evangelicalism seems to be the part of the church that's growing, most of all in emerging nations. I'm simply noting that a lot of people seem not to be too worried about holding to Paul's soteriology despite (or as well as) what science is telling them.

Yes, numbers would also prove that Islam is the one true faith. Numbers prove nothing. As for the fact hat most evangelicals seem rather unconcerned to hold to Paul's soteriology despite what science is telling them, it's a constant source of amazement for me. As Luigi stated earlier in this thread, to believe in a figurative fall is definitely not a get out of jail free card. What then? Did Christ become one of us and die to free us from a metaphor?

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

mr cheesy

We have vast cities which work incredibly well - moving hordes and hordes of people round daily. None of which could happen if we weren't co-operative, social beings.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Luigi, thanks for your response. It's less that my view of science is negative than that I seem impervious to it challenging my core spiritual beliefs, I think, as it doesn't scratch the right itches. Fair point about this working both ways, though.
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
What was once the heart of so many Christian theologies is not working anymore now. I think evangelicalism is doomed because of this.
But the numbers right now, worldwide, seem to be saying the opposite. Evangelicalism seems to be the part of the church that's growing, most of all in emerging nations. I'm simply noting that a lot of people seem not to be too worried about holding to Paul's soteriology despite (or as well as) what science is telling them.
Yes, numbers would also prove that Islam is the one true faith. Numbers prove nothing. As for the fact hat most evangelicals seem rather unconcerned to hold to Paul's soteriology despite what science is telling them, it's a constant source of amazement for me. As Luigi stated earlier in this thread, to believe in a figurative fall is definitely not a get out of jail free card. What then? Did Christ become one of us and die to free us from a metaphor?

Way to move the goalposts. "Is it true?" and "Is it successful?" are two entirely different questions. Your comment that evangelicalism is doomed refers to success, not truth.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Did Christ become one of us and die to free us from a metaphor?

That certainly encapsulates the problem I have nicely. It seems to me that either both (Christ becoming one of us and the condition he frees us from) are only metaphors, or neither are only metaphors.

Otherwise, what LVER said.

[ 06. April 2016, 09:01: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I don't think anyone is saying that the state that Christ rescues us from is metaphorical. I don't think there's a debate about the lack of perfection in the world, or the world as it was 2000 years ago. That's very real. Isn't the debate about whether the Biblical explanation is metaphorical?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

My immediate question about Joesaphat's comment was born of wondering whether he thinks the Incarnation is only* metaphorical, too.

*not meant in a pejorative sense. I mean as opposed to material.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I cannot believe in a fall in any biblically meaningful way. Until someone can explain to me how death entered creation because of human sin, I simply cannot.

I don't think the idea of literal death entering creation because of the fall is in any way the heart of the concept.

The heart of the concept of the fall is that whereas God created humanity in a pristine state, in which unselfish love was the norm, the same is no longer true. The fall means that people's natural state shifted from being unselfish and God centered to being selfish and self centered.

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
What I think a lot of people fail to see is that it requires us to do away with most of St Paul's soteriology: 'since by man came death by man came also the resurrection... etc' and his idea that sinlessness means immortality.

I think that most Christians have always understood Paul to be referring to spiritual death, not physical death. Spiritual death is a state of damnation.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that most Christians have always understood Paul to be referring to spiritual death, not physical death. Spiritual death is a state of damnation.

But what I understand Luigi, Joesaphat et al. to be saying is that if it's only moral and spiritual, there is no reason for it to have had an impact on the rest of the universe, which, even if we concede that vegetarian lions are a trifling detail, nevertheless leads to questions about what Paul means by the "whole of creation" groaning and so on.

Is it only "groaning" "spiritually", and if so what does that mean? Does it mean anything more than "metaphorically"?

And if so, where does that leave his thoughts on the resurrection? Is that only a metaphor, too?

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
My immediate question about Joesaphat's comment was born of wondering whether he thinks the Incarnation is only* metaphorical, too.

*not meant in a pejorative sense. I mean as opposed to material.

No, I don't, neither do I believe that he is the new Adam come to rescue us from the curse of the first, though.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Freddy - I think there are a fair number of us who are arguing that we don't buy the idea we were initially made in a pristine state - no evidence whatsoever. And if there was we'd never stop hearing of it from the conservatives.

Curiosity - this may be where we differ. I don't think our lack of perfection is an issue to God and shouldn't be to us. How on earth can we be perfect in the light if our evolutionary development? Indeed struggling to address this is the very point at which some of the most destructive elements creep into our thinking.

For me Jesus came to show what God was really like and not some sacrifice obsessed capricious bully who has dominated most of ancient religion (both within and without the Judeo-Christian tradition!

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

I mean just as I cannot believe that death invaded the cosmos because of human sin, which is very much what Paul literally says, neither do I believe that we are saved from death by the death of a sinless one.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Freddy - I think there are a fair number of us who are arguing that we don't buy the idea we were initially made in a pristine state - no evidence whatsoever. And if there was we'd never stop hearing of it from the conservatives.

Curiosity - this may be where we differ. I don't think our lack of perfection is an issue to God and shouldn't be to us. How on earth can we be perfect in the light if our evolutionary development? Indeed struggling to address this is the very point at which some of the most destructive elements creep into our thinking.

For me Jesus came to show what God was really like and not some sacrifice obsessed capricious bully who has dominated most of ancient religion (both within and without the Judeo-Christian tradition!

The man's right IMV. That's pretty much where I stand too. [Razz]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
No, I don't, neither do I believe that he is the new Adam come to rescue us from the curse of the first, though.

Okay, I'm beginning to get a feel for where you're coming from in terms of how you view Paul, then [Biased]

But if you believe in a literal incarnation (doubtless with metaphorical implications which are also important...), what do you see as being the point of going to all that bother if not to somehow reconnect the human with the divine (which to my mind suggests a disconnect some time previously...)?

Isn't that idea there in the protoevangelium in Genesis, or is that just another bit of ex-post eisegesis in your view?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
For me Jesus came to show what God was really like and not some sacrifice obsessed capricious bully who has dominated most of ancient religion (both within and without the Judeo-Christian tradition!

Sorry, cross posted with Josesaphat's response here.

I think there's a bit of theological headspace between those two extremes.

And again, even if we discount your second 'sacrifice-obsessed' option, why would we need to know what God was really like if we weren't somehow disconnected from him in the first place?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Curiosity - this may be where we differ. I don't think our lack of perfection is an issue to God and shouldn't be to us. How on earth can we be perfect in the light if our evolutionary development? Indeed struggling to address this is the very point at which some of the most destructive elements creep into our thinking.

I have very carefully not said where I think God comes into this (lots and lots of practice with fundamentalist friends).

I posted a link earlier to a BBC article on the evolution of evil that points out that the Dark Tetrad of evil behaviour - all four types of behaviour identified as evil, Machiavellism, psychopathy, narcissism and sadism can be found in the animal kingdom, which suggests that nature tooth in claw is our natural state.

I believe that God is our hope to save us from these behaviours, but I am not sure how much He had to do with its creation. (Back to deism, theism, panentheism and atheism and the rest.)

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I mean just as I cannot believe that death invaded the cosmos because of human sin, which is very much what Paul literally says, neither do I believe that we are saved from death by the death of a sinless one.

I agree with you on both counts.

To me, though, this is a straw man. Both a literal understanding of Paul's words about death, and the idea that Christ's death fixes it, are complete misunderstandings of biblical teaching.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
For me Jesus came to show what God was really like and not some sacrifice obsessed capricious bully who has dominated most of ancient religion (both within and without the Judeo-Christian tradition!
Sorry, cross posted with Josesaphat's response here.

I think there's a bit of theological headspace between those two extremes.

And again, even if we discount your second 'sacrifice-obsessed' option, why would we need to know what God was really like if we weren't somehow disconnected from him in the first place?

Eutychus - I don't see why you have to have some disconnect - whether it be due to us not being entirely perfect or us not evolving quickly enough in a positive direction - another PoV I've heard, but that doesn't seem tenable to me.

What do we know with a very high level of certainty? That God has been pretty elusive throughout history. Humans have evolved barely at all over the past 100,000 years and yet all that important detail of how God expects humans to behave (the scriptures) was only available to a minute proportion. When we think Geographicaly as well as Historically then this reluctance to engage clearly and consistently with all the different people groups who have ever lived, is pretty self evident.

Indeed the Scriptures themselves seem to refer to God's elusive nature at times. Put this together with an OT which commands people to not murder but then demands at one point that 'his chosen people' commit genocide then it is hardly surprising that God isn't exactly clearly understood.

Add to this the not uncommon human desire to have a supernatural bully on their tribes side to aid them in battles, and perhaps it is not surprising that there were some misconceptions that needed to be corrected. I see no reason to use humanity's inability to be perfect, as the main reason for God's elusiveness. He just is! That seems to be the way 'he' operates.

[ 06. April 2016, 17:51: Message edited by: Luigi ]

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I mean just as I cannot believe that death invaded the cosmos because of human sin, which is very much what Paul literally says, neither do I believe that we are saved from death by the death of a sinless one.
I agree with you on both counts.

To me, though, this is a straw man. Both a literal understanding of Paul's words about death, and the idea that Christ's death fixes it, are complete misunderstandings of biblical teaching.

How? most of Christendom through the ages would disagree with you as much as it does with me.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that most Christians have always understood Paul to be referring to spiritual death, not physical death. Spiritual death is a state of damnation.
But what I understand Luigi, Joesaphat et al. to be saying is that if it's only moral and spiritual, there is no reason for it to have had an impact on the rest of the universe, which, even if we concede that vegetarian lions are a trifling detail, nevertheless leads to questions about what Paul means by the "whole of creation" groaning and so on.

Is it only "groaning" "spiritually", and if so what does that mean? Does it mean anything more than "metaphorically"?

And if so, where does that leave his thoughts on the resurrection? Is that only a metaphor, too?

Of course it is. What else could it be? It's HIS story, it worked for him.

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

Luigi - I am not sure we can say confidently that human beings haven't evolved or changed over the last 100,000 years.

All we can really be sure of is that the human skeleton hasn't changed much over the last 100,000 years - hence the reason why "anatomically modern" is used as a term of description.

Very significant changes/advances in human behavior happened about 50,000 years ago without there being any corresponding change that can be detected in human skeletons.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Green Mario: All we can really be sure of is that the human skeleton hasn't changed much over the last 100,000 years

Have we become taller? (Genuine question; I'm not sure.)

[ 06. April 2016, 21:09: Message edited by: LeRoc ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
Luigi - I am not sure we can say confidently that human beings haven't evolved or changed over the last 100,000 years.

All we can really be sure of is that the human skeleton hasn't changed much over the last 100,000 years - hence the reason why "anatomically modern" is used as a term of description.

Very significant changes/advances in human behavior happened about 50,000 years ago without there being any corresponding change that can be detected in human skeletons.

Those changes are highly unlikely to have been genetic.

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
Luigi - I am not sure we can say confidently that human beings haven't evolved or changed over the last 100,000 years.

All we can really be sure of is that the human skeleton hasn't changed much over the last 100,000 years - hence the reason why "anatomically modern" is used as a term of description.

Very significant changes/advances in human behavior happened about 50,000 years ago without there being any corresponding change that can be detected in human skeletons.

Whilst the point I made isn't drastically affected as fas I can tell - that still leaves nigh on 46000 years. However my information was based on comments by an Oxford professor of anthropology so I am curious as to what these significant changes would be especially if there is no anatomical evidence.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Of course it is. What else could it be? It's HIS story, it worked for him.

I'm trying to get my head around the idea of Paul's epistles being, in their entirety, his personal take on what was going on and nothing else.

I'm not saying I've tried (or failed) in that mental exercise overall, but I cannot for the life of me make sense of Christ's resurrection if it is a metaphor and not also a reality (in the sense of Christ having a continuing, autonomous existence as testified to after the resurrection). Back to the intersection of the divine and the incarnate, which seems to me to be so critical.

I don't mentally put the "Fall" in the "has to be as materially solid as the resurrection" category. However, I'm not sure about the idea of a "rise" to Christ from a position of ignorance, because Genesis 1-11 seems pretty insistent on the idea of something having been lost to humanity prior to it being found again (in Christ, as Paul would have it). I'll have to think as to whether I'm simply assuming that holds for the rest of Scripture or whether there's more evidence of it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

We're creedal Eutychus. We accept the first and second person testimonies of the NT. Paul's, Peter's and Mary's. And Jesus'.

For me that's it. Their musings are human. Carriers of meaning. Metaphor. Of their time. The result of their inspiring experiences at best and in part. But not otherwise.

Except Jesus. Who knew what He was. And obviously little else. How could He? He certainly believed in the Fall that never was. How could He not? He did innately, more than any other ever could, because of the perichoretic nature of His natures, whatever they are, KNOW that He WAS the embodiment of the trajectory of the revelation of love.

Being worked out in weak, ignorant human flesh. He was the watcher of the nature of a toad trumped by the nature of a prince in His own mind. He followed the path of penal substitutionary atonement so obviously layed out for Him in OUR story. In ignorant, i.e. faithful, hope. For charity.

He lived without EVER abusing power, impossible for a human and defeated sin - helpless, innocent, feckless separation from God - and DEATH.

He is the greatest metaphor of all time in that. We still haven't the faintest idea how we will go from being redeemed yet sinners to fully redeemed, we have to go beyond mere death to find out in Him.

For now we must make up better and better and kinder stories, on the trajectory of His and Paul's on Him and more.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
To me, though, this is a straw man. Both a literal understanding of Paul's words about death, and the idea that Christ's death fixes it, are complete misunderstandings of biblical teaching.
How? most of Christendom through the ages would disagree with you as much as it does with me.

Yes, they probably would. I think that you see the problems with the majority view.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that most Christians have always understood Paul to be referring to spiritual death, not physical death. Spiritual death is a state of damnation.
But what I understand Luigi, Joesaphat et al. to be saying is that if it's only moral and spiritual, there is no reason for it to have had an impact on the rest of the universe, which, even if we concede that vegetarian lions are a trifling detail, nevertheless leads to questions about what Paul means by the "whole of creation" groaning and so on.

Is it only "groaning" "spiritually", and if so what does that mean? Does it mean anything more than "metaphorically"?

And if so, where does that leave his thoughts on the resurrection? Is that only a metaphor, too?
Of course it is. What else could it be? It's HIS story, it worked for him.

The resurrection is not only a metaphor. It really happened.

That is a completely different thing than whether Paul means physical death or spiritual death being introduced at the fall. The concept of the fall is introduced in the story of Adam and Eve in Eden. This is a story full of magic talking animals and impossible events that most people understand as an ancient metaphorical tale.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The concept of the fall is introduced in the story of Adam and Eve in Eden. This is a story full of magic talking animals and impossible events that most people understand as an ancient metaphorical tale.

In this scenario, what is the "fall" part a metaphor for? Adam and Eve are (irrespective of whether they were an actual couple, in my view) a metaphor for our origins. Can you sustain a metaphorical explanation of the "fall" that isn't also to do with our origins?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Even if the implication of the Fall is that it's part of the origins of the human condition, does that mean that it's binding for ever more? We know that the first creation narrative isn't accurate (the order of creation for the earth, stars, suns, waters is jumbled) but that doesn't stop it from being a story of how the Earth was created. Can't we say that the story telling the origins of humans noted that human traits weren't always wonderful and produced a story to explain why, but we know now that those traits are innate?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Even if the implication of the Fall is that it's part of the origins of the human condition, does that mean that it's binding for ever more?

I don't feel very wedded to the idea of inherited guilt; one of the reasons I keep putting scare quotes round "Fall", I think.

quote:
Can't we say that the story telling the origins of humans noted that human traits weren't always wonderful and produced a story to explain why, but we know now that those traits are innate?

If the end result in both cases is the conclusion that humanity needs some sort of metamorphosis from its present condition to become truly and fully "wonderful", then why not?

If the end result of describing them as "innate" is to say that how we are, warts and all, is as good as it's ever going to get, not so sure.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

But isn't that the whole point of the Christian faith? That we believe in the redemptive power of God*, as incarnated in Jesus Christ, to make us anew. And that we should work to the coming of His Kingdom† (that striving for perfection)?

* in which ever deist, theist, panentheist form
† Whether on Earth now, or Heaven is another moot point

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But isn't that the whole point of the Christian faith? That we believe in the redemptive power of God*, as incarnated in Jesus Christ, to make us anew. And that we should work to the coming of His Kingdom† (that striving for perfection)?

Here's me following your playbook, striving not to use 'God', and now this [Biased]

I can agree with all that, very much so. Where this debate started was in a Dead Horse discussion, and an argument about the extent to which different aspects of our our current and different sexualities are to do with our "fallenness", calling for both accommodation and inclusion, and ultimate transformation and redemption in that Kingdom.

(That aspect of the discussion belongs, of course, in Dead Horses!)

Posted by Green Mario (# 18090) on :

Luigi - I agree it doesn't impact your point much (if people have stayed the same for the last 50,000 years) except to say that the lack of development/change in what people are like can't necessarily be inferred from lack of changes in their skeletons. Perhaps there have been more recent changes to?

Wikipedia source about hunan evolution below:

Behavioral modernity

Le Roc - I think the evidence is that people got shorter when agriculture first came on the scene (hunter/gatherers were taller) as agriculture allows people to have enough calories to survive without a balanced enough diet for good growth and then have become taller again in very recent times. I have heard discussion before about how Genesis contains cultural rememberings of better times when humans were hunter/gatherers and foraged in the "garden" rather than growing their own food by the sweat of their brow. Not sure I subscribe to this (it just be a form of the myth of the "noble savage")but its an interesting idea.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

But, from the BBC story above, we have so many more harmful ways of being fallen - psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism and the last of the Dark Tetrad, (that I can't remember and can't look up while posting on my phone) all innate, not forgetting what we are doing to the Planet - to worry about behaviours which most people would agree are fruitful.

(It amuses me that my phone recognises Machiavellianism, when my laptop does not.)

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But, from the BBC story above, we have so many more harmful ways of being fallen - psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism and the last of the Dark Tetrad, (that I can't remember and can't look up while posting on my phone) all innate, not forgetting what we are doing to the Planet - to worry about behaviours which most people would agree are fruitful.

Oh, I couldn't agree more that in many ways, our priorities can be all skew-whiff.

It just so happens that the DH issue is the one which prompted a comparison of a belief in some kind of "fall" to belief in Jesus riding a dinosaur, which is where I felt I needed a sanity check in Purgatory. I'm not sure what the findings suggest in that regard [Biased]

Posted by Luigi (# 4031) on :

Thanks for the link Green Mario - very interesting.

I suppose I was looking for a date when most would agree we were fully human - some would go back even further I know.

I guess the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution can also be put down as signicant shifts in behaviour. Maybe it's a shame Paul wasn't born a great deal later as his theology would no doubt have been very different.

By the by, it is a shame no one responded to Le Roc's post on page one. A good post.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Eutychus: belief in Jesus riding a dinosaur

I'm sure that the Second Person of the Trinity time travels to the Cretaceous period every now and again, just for fun (I would).

(@Luigi: thank you.)

Posted by Doone (# 18470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:

By the by, it is a shame no one responded to Le Roc's post on page one. A good post.

I agree Luigi, I'm still mulling that one over - lots of implications to follow through.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I completely agree with it. But not the one above. There is no past or future either. There again I do have an irony by-pass.

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
In this scenario, what is the "fall" part a metaphor for? Adam and Eve are (irrespective of whether they were an actual couple, in my view) a metaphor for our origins. Can you sustain a metaphorical explanation of the "fall" that isn't also to do with our origins?

Yes, I think that you can sustain a metaphorical explanation of "the fall" that doesn't also mean that God did not create us. If that is what you mean.

As I see it, God did create us, but the description in Genesis is a metaphor rather than a literal description of how He did it. Life developed over a long period of time on this planet, just as science describes it. The six days of creation are a metaphor for the way that God turned our primitive ancestors into humans, endowing them with an eternal soul.

The description of the fall is a metaphor for the way that humanity chose to follow its own path rather than depend overtly on God. This is the meaning behind the serpent, fruit, trees, etc. Over time they gradually exhibited a confidence in and preference for the information they received through their sense in favor of the less tangible inner dictates of God.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
There is no past or future either.

So how do you understand the concept of hope, Martin?

[ 07. April 2016, 11:37: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that you can sustain a metaphorical explanation of "the fall" that doesn't also mean that God did not create us. If that is what you mean.

Sorry, no, that's not what I meant. What I meant was much closer to what you put here, emphasis mine:

quote:
The descriptin of the fall is a metaphor for the way that humanity chose to follow its own path rather than depend overtly on God. This is the meaning behind the serpent, fruit, trees, etc. Over time they gradually exhibited a confidence in and preference for the information they received through their sense in favor of the less tangible inner dictates of God.

What this suggests to me is that you accept the idea of human origins, (in the past, not in Martin60's all-pervading present; or, as Jesus has it, in the beginning) in a state in which they did not "follow their own path" and did "depend overtly on God".

(Irrespective of whether there was a tree, fruit, fig-leaves, vegetarian lions, or a light-sabre-wielding angel at the gates of Eden...)

...that view to me has the advantage of allowing for Paul was not simply making it up as he went along, and does I think lead to a rather different view of how we see the human condition today compared to one in which all we are doing, or called to do, is "rise" all the time rather than be "restored". And it's nice and linear [Smile]

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
And it's nice and linear

The more linear the better. [Cool]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

As well as I understand the concept of now in Love Eutychus.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
Eutychus: belief in Jesus riding a dinosaur
I'm sure that the Second Person of the Trinity time travels to the Cretaceous period every now and again, just for fun (I would).

(@Luigi: thank you.)

LeRoc, I need to steal your brain. It comes up with such charming ideas.
[Yipee]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
As well as I understand the concept of now in Love Eutychus.

Beautifully dodged.

Do you not think hope requires the prospect of something better in the future?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Green Mario:
hunan evolution

In regards to the culture or cuisine? [Biased]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
As well as I understand the concept of now in Love Eutychus.
Beautifully dodged.

Do you not think hope requires the prospect of something better in the future?

I am in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
a rather different view of how we see the human condition today compared to one in which all we are doing, or called to do, is "rise" all the time rather than be "restored". And it's nice and linear

Rising all the time at a pretty constant rate is linear. Rising at an ever-increasing rate is (loosely speaking) exponential. Turning around and going back to where we once were - the option that appeals to the conservative in us - is another mathematical form entirely.

If we take seriously the idea that humans evolved from animals, then yes, something was lost along the way. Innocence. We are divided. We act, and at the same time self-consciously watch ourselves acting. We compromise. We regret what we didn't know at the time.

And going back to bring animals, or even going back to childhood, to before we first deliberately planned to do something that we knew that others would disapprove of, would be self-mutilation. The only way to improve is forward.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
As well as I understand the concept of now in Love Eutychus.
Beautifully dodged.

Do you not think hope requires the prospect of something better in the future?
I am in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.

Affirmation of a liturgical statement doesn't answer my question about whether you believe hope requires the prospect of something in the future (and therefore, by implication, a less-than-perfect past).

[ 15. August 2016, 15:09: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Oh aye, hope is in better. Ultimately better for humans being transcendent deconstruction and reconstruction of our feelings and thoughts post mortem. Some of us experience a taste of that now: time heals and I can testify that a healed God narrative helps. EVERYBODY will get that in the resurrection.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

To refresh your memory, this question came up because we were discussing whether the narrative of Scripture has a linear component: a "things used to be better than they are now" time, a "things as they then were before Christ" time, and our present "now and not yet" time, prior to "all things being made new" after the eschaton.

Our various understandings of what the "fall" might or not might mean have been done to death above, but suffice it to say now that from where I'm typing, the concept of hope is bound up in that linearity, suggesting not only a future, but also, by extension, a past.

As far as I can see you still haven't explained hope in any terms other than a linear narrative that progresses through history - a linearity which you seem to reject.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I utterly reject any made up golden age, that there was a mythical 'better' time. 50,000 years ago we learned to talk and things got more complex. We 'lost', 'fell' from, our a-historical, hunter-gatherer 'innocence'. Innocence in all our oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital psychosexual development as a species: We've always been dirty monkeys. Complex is better. With more opportunities for worse. Universes evolve toward better. With accompanying worse. We became nomads, herders, shepherds. Then smiths, potters, farmers. Land owners. You know the story. Bash the bones enough and you get in to orbit.

And yeah, of course the century old Freudian STORY doesn't hold up, I'm using it as a metaphor for development because it's more colourful ... dirty. Before it could speak, humanity would have been no less unspeakable in its general behaviour than it is on a bad day in Raqqa. More so. Life was nasty, brutish and short. We've become ... better. With a accompanying worse.

And it certainly isn't linear. The noösphere is expanding exponentially.

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

God made Adam and Eve in His own image, right? So if they were curious and adventurous God must have had those characteristics.
So He should have known that they'd investigate the fruit, and grow in maturity, and so on.
I've written my version of the story, in which they follow the river, make their way through the less-than-hospitable countryside, discover cold, pain and hunger, and learn to cope with adversity, as they mature as individuals.
I think there's a dog in the story, that snuggles up to keep them warm at night and shows them how to kill for food.
If I had a website I'd post a link, but if anyone's really curious they can pm me.

GG

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I utterly reject any made up golden age, that there was a mythical 'better' time. 50,000 years ago we learned to talk and things got more complex. We 'lost', 'fell' from, our a-historical, hunter-gatherer 'innocence'. (...) Complex is better. With more opportunities for worse.

In your analysis there still seems to be room for a "worse" to have emerged that is worth being "saved" from.

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

An evangelical type once told me that, for a believing Christian, creationism is the only position which makes sense. Adam fell and Christ rose undoing, at least in potential, the death Adam brought upon us. While I regard creationism as completely absurd, there is logic in the view that it's the only way to make the Bible, Old and New Testaments together, into a coherent story. So someone who isn't a creationist has to figure out what the creation narrative is really about.

We all have our own ways of doing this, and don't always come up with the same conclusions. My take on it would be this: No one would accuse a lion of sinning when it tears a defenceless zebra apart and eats it. It is merely following its God given instincts. At some point in human evolution, our species developed the imagination to stand outside itself and imagine the sufferings of others. From then, every action had a moral component. Does what I do cause suffering to others? Where we fail to live up to our highest ideals, we are fallen creatures. But it's more a failure to rise to what we should be, than a fall from a previously perfect state, which has never occurred in nature.

So what Jesus does is show us what it's like to rise to what we ought to be, obedient to God and a servant of all, completely free of slavery to self. This is the aim and hopefully the destiny of all sentient beings in our journey Godwards.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Our need for transcendent salvation has never changed. No matter how emotionally deconstructed and reconstructed, how healed we become as individuals, groups, a species, no matter how socially just, we die. Where we'll find that we're all, heading up to a trillion of us, at the same level. From where the increase of His government will have no end.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

So in your scheme of things, at what point did the notion of death become so absurd, become, in CS Lewis' words, the "eternal Surd in the universal mathematic"?

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

From the moment of Jesus' first public pronouncement of the Kingdom.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Why?

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Jesus initiated living in the light of the Kingdom of eternal life in paradise as if it were full and present reality. Repentance in other words. We are to turn to its light and make our way to it, IN it, which can only be done in loving others. Why do we have to discuss this after two thousand years?

We have eternal life NOW. As PROVED by, in Jesus. The ONLY living, proved, embodied, claim.

[ 16. August 2016, 13:43: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Jesus initiated living in the light of the Kingdom of eternal life in paradise as if it were full and present reality. Repentance in other words. We are to turn to its light and make our way to it, IN it, which can only be done in loving others. Why do we have to discuss this after two thousand years?

Martin, we're in total agreement this time!

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Jesus initiated living in the light of the Kingdom of eternal life in paradise as if it were full and present reality. Repentance in other words. We are to turn to its light and make our way to it, IN it, which can only be done in loving others. Why do we have to discuss this after two thousand years?

We have eternal life NOW. As PROVED by, in Jesus. The ONLY living, proved, embodied, claim.

So just to get this clear, death wasn't absurd before that?

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

It was all there was.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Martin I try, I really do try to understand you, but if there's any enlightenment to be had from what you're saying, you're going to have to be a lot clearer in saying it (at least as far as I'm concerned).

To my mind being elliptical is a close neighbour to esoterism. If your views are that complicated to explain/understand I begin to doubt that they are really Good News.

Is that the sort of language you use with the down-and-outs you're always telling us you rejoice in frequenting? Because it certainly wouldn't cut any mustard with the down-and-outs I frequent - and who I suspect are preceding me into the Kingdom of God.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

My down and outs loved it when I said on Friday that unfortunately I need a reason to [try and] be kind and that reason is Jesus.

One of the 'leaders' went ballistic when I wouldn't play his game, he asked if I thought kind got us in to heaven. I said I wasn't interested in getting to heaven.

Talking of elliptical if not esoteric, what kind of question is 'So just to get this clear, death wasn't absurd before that?'. My answer stands. In the absence of Jesus, all we have is oblivion.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I think people were of the view that death was absurd before Jesus came along.

Which is not what you seem to be saying.

[ 16. August 2016, 19:08: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I'm intrigued. I'm not aware of any people expressing the absurdity of death before Jesus or since, apart from the tension in absurdism. I'm sure people have been saying something like there has to be something more than this for a while, feeling that without being able to articulate it since the origin of language at least. The absurdity of existence, not non-existence, seemed to bemuse David and the writer of Job before him.

Death IS absurd, yeah, it mocks us, our egos, we're so alive and th

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

It seems to me that something is absurd when we expect it to have meaning, and it does not. Did people before Christ expect death to have meaning? I'm not so sure they did. Certainly Aristotle did not. Plato thought death did have meaning, so he did not think it absurd. Qoheleth thought life was absurd, but did he say specifically that death was absurd? I do not know. Much of the old testament gives the opinion that death is futile, but not that it's absurd. I'm not certain that any meaning of death is expected in the OT.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

No such thing as a fall. To say that is to say that humans have made a tiny slip and are paying for it for all time.

No, what is taking place is open rebellion against God. This is something humans have noticed throughout time, so it it not hard to project it into pre historic myth. I define myth as a story that seeks to explain the human condition.

On top of that there is not only the open rebellion, but the refusal to take responsibility for what happened. "It was the woman, which you gave me." "It was the serpent, which you created." Poor serpent, it got the short end of the stick (who says there isn't humor in the Bible?).

If anything, the story, known as the fall is actually a story about the refusal to take responsiblity for our actions.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Death IS absurd, yeah, it mocks us, our egos, we're so alive and th

[Deleted Hellish post]

I give up. I'm really trying to grapple with the insights I glimpse from time to time in your posts, and thus potentially change my views, but what I get from this is that for you, the discussion is more of a game of intellectual hide-and-seek with the odd two-cent joke thrown in. If you're not taking it seriously, then neither should I.

I'm sure we're talking past each other quite a lot here, and that's probably as much my fault as it is yours, but sometimes I get the feeling you're cultivating that misunderstanding and not seeking to overcome it, and I just can't cope with obfuscation when I'm in search of clarity.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I don't believe in a literal Fall. It's quite obvious that death existed long before human sin. It's rather more of a failure to rise. At some point in human evolution our ancestors developed the imagination to stand outside themselves and realise that all their actions have consequences, sometimes unpleasant, for others. They also began to contemplate their origins, their destiny and their Creator. All of which left them with a knowledge, as it still does for us today, that we don't always live up to our highest ideals. That is our fall.

With that in mind, I don't see the Incarnation as being primarily about saving us from this fallen state, but more about lifting us closer to the state we should be in. It's about Christ uniting the human nature to the divine, and lifting our humanity into the Godhead. This may well be another step on the road of our evolution as creatures who co-operate with God in His creation. Though Christ's work is complete, it's far from complete in most of us as individuals, but He takes us by the hand and leads us.

This. Better than I could've put it.
[Overused]

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I just can't cope with obfuscation when I'm in search of clarity.

Seems to me that's what God does all the time. Nothing is clear. Thus these endless discussions on God's intentions and purposes.

I also believe in the 'failure to become' model of the fall.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I don't believe in a literal Fall. It's quite obvious that death existed long before human sin. It's rather more of a failure to rise. At some point in human evolution our ancestors developed the imagination to stand outside themselves and realise that all their actions have consequences, sometimes unpleasant, for others. They also began to contemplate their origins, their destiny and their Creator. All of which left them with a knowledge, as it still does for us today, that we don't always live up to our highest ideals. That is our fall.

With that in mind, I don't see the Incarnation as being primarily about saving us from this fallen state, but more about lifting us closer to the state we should be in. It's about Christ uniting the human nature to the divine, and lifting our humanity into the Godhead. This may well be another step on the road of our evolution as creatures who co-operate with God in His creation. Though Christ's work is complete, it's far from complete in most of us as individuals, but He takes us by the hand and leads us.
This. Better than I could've put it.

Maybe, but what do we do with all the bits in St Paul which very clearly state that death entered the world because of human sin, and that we are saved from it by the sacrifice of a sinless Christ? We can re-interpret these old texts to suit any kind of situation, I guess, I think we would be better advised to simply revise the whole idea of a 'Biblical revelation.' Paul was wrong, wrong as wrong can be, and if our church(es) carry on basing their entire soteriology on this, we are doomed.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

God might not always be clear, but I don't think he goes out of his way to obfuscate.

The "failure to become" model has appeal and merits, but talking in terms of "failure" and "ideal" nevertheless suggests something went wrong somewhere, and that some choices made are/were morally wrong.

Not only did we become morally aware, we made and keep on making morally wrong choices, as Romans 7 eloquently testifies.

Evil has got into the system somehow, and the Bible depicts humanity as having some responsibility in that. I don't think it's necessary to subscribe to the Augustinian notion of inherited guilt to acknowledge that. Even if sin is mostly about "missing the mark", I think there's something more pernicious at work too.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Maybe, but what do we do with all the bits in St Paul which very clearly state that death entered the world because of human sin, and that we are saved from it by the sacrifice of a sinless Christ? We can re-interpret these old texts to suit any kind of situation, I guess, I think we would be better advised to simply revise the whole idea of a 'Biblical revelation.' Paul was wrong, wrong as wrong can be, and if our church(es) carry on basing their entire soteriology on this, we are doomed.

Hello again: we've been here before [Big Grin]

Paul is certainly doing the best he can with the light he had but if he was nothing more than utterly mistaken, there's nothing special at all about Biblical revelation, in which case I think churches themselves are pretty much a false premise.

However, I don't think the choice is quite as binary as you make out. Challenging assumptions about what he really said/meant is worth investigating, I think.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

The "failure to become" model has appeal and merits, but talking in terms of "failure" and "ideal" nevertheless suggests something went wrong somewhere, and that some choices made are/were morally wrong.

Why can't those choices be those made by humans, individually and collectively, from their own free will? The less perfect choices we all make from our own human nature.

quote:
Not only did we become morally aware, we made and keep on making morally wrong choices, as Romans 7 eloquently testifies.

But isn't that just part of being a fallible human?

quote:
Evil has got into the system somehow, and the Bible depicts humanity as having some responsibility in that. I don't think it's necessary to subscribe to the Augustinian notion of inherited guilt to acknowledge that. Even if sin is mostly about "missing the mark", I think there's something more pernicious at work too.

Couldn't Augustine be expressing our ability to do the wrong thing, even when we have moral agency and awareness, as "inherited guilt"? Could it be that the difference between humanity and the animal kingdom be that moral agency and awareness*?

Why does there have to be something more pernicious at work?

Working with challenging families, the situation is often the result of several generations of dysfunction. Couldn't that be an expression of fall?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Could it be that the difference between humanity and the animal kingdom be that moral agency and awareness*?

Why does there have to be something more pernicious at work?

Well, the Genesis narrative posits a third-party instigator behind the wrong moral choice. On the face of it, there's more to it than simply becoming morally aware. Remove that from the narrative and a whole lot more falls out later on.

quote:
Working with challenging families, the situation is often the result of several generations of dysfunction. Couldn't that be an expression of fall?

Very probably. Working with inmates I get that impression 99% of the time. But do you never get the idea, be it 1% of the time or less, that you've seen something so utterly evil it surpasses mere human agency?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I see these children at 11 upwards, and even with the very, very challenging children at that age, I can see why. They build the defences as they go through puberty. It's much harder to see beyond the hard shell when those same youngsters are older. It's also harder to break through the defences to help them.

I read Genesis as telling truths through stories, rather than literal truth. So the description of the fall is a way telling that truth of humankind "falling" by going their own way rather than following the "higher path". Then that same imagery continues to be reflected throughout the Bible as a shorthand for that understanding.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Yes, I really don't have much problem with that.

That said, while I understand the difficulties of the term "fall", I balk at replacing it throughout with "rise". I think that to do so breaks the narrative beyond repair.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Maybe, but what do we do with all the bits in St Paul which very clearly state that death entered the world because of human sin, and that we are saved from it by the sacrifice of a sinless Christ? We can re-interpret these old texts to suit any kind of situation, I guess, I think we would be better advised to simply revise the whole idea of a 'Biblical revelation.' Paul was wrong, wrong as wrong can be, and if our church(es) carry on basing their entire soteriology on this, we are doomed.
Hello again: we've been here before

Paul is certainly doing the best he can with the light he had but if he was nothing more than utterly mistaken, there's nothing special at all about Biblical revelation, in which case I think churches themselves are pretty much a false premise.

However, I don't think the choice is quite as binary as you make out. Challenging assumptions about what he really said/meant is worth investigating, I think.

yes, we've been there before, but I have yet to read a convincing answer to the problem. If the whole old Adam/new Adam paradigm is reinterpreted as a matter of 'emergence' or whatever, the bottom-line remains that we are not saved from death by Christ's death, and yes, the biblical 'revelation' on this matter is demonstrably false and, therefore, no revelation at all, only a jumble of texts which are interesting when it comes to the history of Christian theology.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

You're expressing pretty much what I'm thinking, although perhaps for different reasons.

However, I think there's some room between interpreting what Paul says in this respect in very Augustinian/PSA terms and rejecting what he says outright.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Then let me be clear. There was no Fall. There is a rise and there is no failure in it. There are limits. I can't make any sense of eternity with fallen angels in it, of human existence with transpersonal evil about. You have met people with brain lesions or other more subtle wiring and programming errors who manifest the dark tetrad. What has that got to do with transpersonal evil? Assuming it exists? Even Jesus was paradoxical about this: Tartarus is not a house divided but the NT is full of out of control, insane demons.

Jesus had a VERY strong narrative of transpersonal evil, some of which is easy to see as projection. Some isn't. Furthermore His existence was heralded by righteous angels.

If there is an angelic realm, then talk of a fall and the moral culpability of anyone for anything is even more chaotic. Like all claims of the supernatural in this life.

So, until they show their hand, any of them, for good or ill, angels, demons, Holy Spirit, in no uncertain terms, like Christopher Ecclestone's awesome miracle at the Maine Road ground in The Second Coming, I suggest we get on with our lives in the less chaotic light of Christ (who had to believe all manner of nonsense) and ignore all the chaotic bits.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
No such thing as a fall. To say that is to say that humans have made a tiny slip and are paying for it for all time.

No, what is taking place is open rebellion against God. This is something humans have noticed throughout time, so it it not hard to project it into pre historic myth. I define myth as a story that seeks to explain the human condition.

On top of that there is not only the open rebellion, but the refusal to take responsibility for what happened. "It was the woman, which you gave me." "It was the serpent, which you created." Poor serpent, it got the short end of the stick (who says there isn't humor in the Bible?).

If anything, the story, known as the fall is actually a story about the refusal to take responsiblity for our actions.

Open rebellion against who? What happened?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Why are you asking? Your mind appears to be made up.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Why are you asking? Your mind appears to be made up.

Why are you asking why am I asking?

Yes, of course my mind IS made up that there never has been a 'rebellion' against God. He was NEVER in charge. It's a meaningless concept. It's a STORY. Made up, funnily enough, in the Bronze Age.

Nobody has ever known God sufficiently, personally enough to rebel against Him in any way other than to be unkind, dishonest, faithless, merciless, ungrateful when they know they should be kind, honest, faithful, merciful, grateful.

You mean you have an open mind about that? 50:50? What? Humans have been around for 200,000 years or 6,000? It's a close call?

Our ancestress picked etz ha-da'at tov va-ra fruit, may be?

It's ALL stories, including Paul's of course therefore. He was working stuff out in the light of Christ from his enculturation. This is KID'S STUFF.

I've made up my mind about many things in the clear light of Christ in eternity. And yeah, some of it's taken 60 years, I'm a bit thick and deeply enculturated. You? It's called growing up.

So, as you can't POSSIBLY imply that you entertain wooden literal belief in myth, what do you mean? What are the myths metaphoric of in the human condition?

You're trying to make the myths work as psychology as the Greeks did in conjunction with logos? Try harder. A LOT harder. They DON'T work. One can see the evils that came with the benefits of social evolution. So? It's called hindsight. We otherize worse than ever whilst co-operating better than ever. Uh huh. Anything more? Where's the REBELLION against GOD?

Your problem isn't with me Eutychus. You MUST know all this. You MUST know that there is no magic and never was. And that we are nature's children and NOTHING is anybody's fault. Not even God's. NOTHING went wrong. Everything, EVERYTHING - all suffering - will be worked out, walked out, talked out, lived out for a thousand years if necessary; deconstructed, reconstructed. Unsuffered.

Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus SAVES.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Why are you asking? Your mind appears to be made up.
Why are you asking why am I asking?

Because you seem to be in the habit of asking gratuitous one-line questions tangential to the thrust of a thread. Such as here, which is where we came back to this thread.

quote:
This is KID'S STUFF (...) You? It's called growing up. (...) Try harder. A LOT harder. (...) Your problem isn't with me Eutychus. You MUST know all this. You MUST know that there is no magic and never was.

I can't answer this attitude outside of Hell. And when I visit Hell I find myself very precisely here. That thread's locked, and I've no energy to start another one, so you'll just have to add me to the list of people who've given up, for the time being at least.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

As I said mate, this about you, not me. Happy to go offline with you. Someone makes a comment ripe with fundamentalist assumption in Purgatory and I launch a one liner.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

That is undisputedly about you and your apparent need to react to such statements.

Or at least, that's what I learned from reading the Hell thread, specifically here.

Now lay off pursing the personal angle before both of us get into trouble with another host (since I'm obviously recusing myself here).

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Ah, so it's about US. We should get a room.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Eutychus

May I try and go back a little to go forward?

The stream was turbulent when we were discussing the end of death. I'm sorry for muddying the waters. We see tips of each others icebergs here and there are masses under the surface with local currents at work on them.

In theory death is just a mere formality since Jesus, implicitly since His first sermon and explicitly since His resurrection. We have eternal life, We're in it. We have to suffer in its light and we can love in its light. Once we pass through death's door, ALL our suffering becomes fully redeemable.

NOBODY I currently fellowship with, except my wife, agrees. My village home group LIKED such things being expressed, but they cannot even be expressed currently in the same community back now where we were before the village.

I find ALL the language of the Fall, of failure, of morality, of conscience - now, let alone Biblical, Pauline, Jesus' - problematic. In need of deconstruction.

Your discussion with Joesaphat is a good dialectic addressing that. Do you have anything more to add at this time?

[ 18. August 2016, 10:45: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

To return to Joesaphat's post above:

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
If the whole old Adam/new Adam paradigm is reinterpreted as a matter of 'emergence' or whatever, the bottom-line remains that we are not saved from death by Christ's death

Paul certainly contrasts Adam and Christ in terms of the one bringing death and the other bringing life. This theme appears to me to run through so much of the Bible, not just Paul, that like Joesaphat I can't recast Scripture solely in terms of "emergence" or a "rise".

Something was lost; something is broken and needs mending. I can't for the life of me make sense of the incarnation if that's not the case.

(However, this does not mean I endorse a continual message of condemnation, which seems to me to be many people's takeaway from Augustine and inherited guilt and the term "fall").

PaulTH said:

quote:
At some point in human evolution our ancestors developed the imagination to stand outside themselves and realise that all their actions have consequences, sometimes unpleasant, for others.

I can countenance that scenario quite readily - up to that point.

But the Biblical narrative presents us with more than an emergence of self-awareness, moral conscience, or the realisation of the potential for "unpleasant consequences": it presents us with our incontrovertible tendency to actually make wrong choices, choices for which our own consciences accuse us. It tells us what we already know: we don't so much feel inadequacy "that we don't always live up to our highest ideals" as we feel guilt.

(This seems to me to be not so much something to be preached as something self-evident which we simply need to acknowledge, at least privately).

What is the death we are saved from? Spiritual, rather than physical death, I would venture; separation from our Creator. That is what Genesis seems to be telling us, anyway.

Physical death is not a problem in and of itself (as I think Mark Twain said, it's more the actual dying that I'm bothered about personally) - if there is a resurrection.

Resurrection on the other side of physical death opens up the prospect of hope, restoration, and resolution. Without it, there's nothing constructive or meaningful, or indeed anything at all.

So where have I got to in all this?

I don't feel compelled to believe in a literal Adam and Eve or garden of Eden. I see no interest in speculating in whether there was a time in creation where there was no physical death.

What I am fairly persuaded of is that "in the beginning", humanity enjoyed a state of relationship with God and with each other "as originally designed" that was not marred by moral failure or deceit.

Something happened, for which humanity was responsible and in which evil was an agency, which destroyed that state of affairs and had a lasting impact for the rest of us.

(I'm not at all wedded to the term "Fall", especially if it brings with it too many connotations of guilt-inducement and condemnation; In French I follow Henri Blocher's terminology and speak exclusively in terms of rupture, which might loosely be translated as "break-up" as of a relationship.)

The collective memory of that time "in Eden" resonates in us; we strive in various ways to recover what was lost; the steps we take away from it create a sense of guilt in us. I believe Christ came to restore the possibility of that relationship, of living in truth, and the hope of resurrection.

In the meantime, we muddle through between the unrecoverable state of the Garden of Eden and the as-yet unrealised prospect of the time when all things will be made new.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Thank you very much for coming back to this thread Eutychus.

I failed to be liberal in my neo-liberalism, again, I see that clearly now.

I apologize unreservedly.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Something was lost; something is broken and needs mending. I can't for the life of me make sense of the incarnation if that's not the case.

Does the fact that something is broken necessarily mean that something has been lost? Could it be that the potential for being better is what is lost here?

Which ties into this point:

quote:
... the Biblical narrative presents us with more than an emergence of self-awareness, moral conscience, or the realisation of the potential for "unpleasant consequences": it presents us with our incontrovertible tendency to actually make wrong choices, choices for which our own consciences accuse us. It tells us what we already know: we don't so much feel inadequacy "that we don't always live up to our highest ideals" as we feel guilt.

Can that also be interpreted as we have the potential to live up to our highest ideals, but we do not manage to do so because of our fallen nature?

quote:
What I am fairly persuaded of is that "in the beginning", humanity enjoyed a state of relationship with God and with each other "as originally designed" that was not marred by moral failure or deceit.

Something happened, for which humanity was responsible and in which evil was an agency, which destroyed that state of affairs and had a lasting impact for the rest of us.

Can that also not be considered as potential to live in a "relationship ... not marred by moral failure and deceit"?

quote:
The collective memory of that time "in Eden" resonates in us; we strive in various ways to recover what was lost; the steps we take away from it create a sense of guilt in us. I believe Christ came to restore the possibility of that relationship, of living in truth, and the hope of resurrection.+

In the meantime, we muddle through between the unrecoverable state of the Garden of Eden and the as-yet unrealised prospect of the time when all things will be made new.

Which leaves this thought intact.

One of the hardest things to deal with is loss of hope - a miscarriage, children not turning out the way we hoped - all are losses of potential. But that is an abstract concept, and fall is a much more concrete way of explaining it.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Does the fact that something is broken necessarily mean that something has been lost?

I cannot make this make sense. If something is broken, then what has been lost is, at least in part, the previous unbroken state of the thing that is now broken. What am I missing?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

That's sort of what I am trying to argue, that we are all potentially "unbroken" in a state of the Garden of Eden, but that is the potential, not the human state. I wonder if broken is a way of expressing of that not living up to our potential, in the same way that fallen nature is another way of expressing that thought.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So the human state is not "unbroken"? By human state do you mean the ideal state or the actual state? I'm having a hard time unpacking your first sentence.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The human state is broken and fallen. Ideally, potentially, it could be unbroken. Those saints are those getting near to that state. It's what we are striving towards if we follow God and potentially can lead us to that higher plane. I don't think any of that is controversial.

I don't see why we have to have an actual event, other than just being human and fallible, to reduce us to this current fallen state. I would suggest that those descriptions of a fall are the analogies used to explain these concepts that have been taken as more than the idea they are trying to convey.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The human state is broken and fallen. Ideally, potentially, it could be unbroken. Those saints are those getting near to that state. It's what we are striving towards if we follow God and potentially can lead us to that higher plane. I don't think any of that is controversial.

I don't see why we have to have an actual event, other than just being human and fallible, to reduce us to this current fallen state. I would suggest that those descriptions of a fall are the analogies used to explain these concepts that have been taken as more than the idea they are trying to convey.

My question is, were we ever in a state in which we weren't broken/fallen/however-you-want-to-put-it? If no, then it would seem we were created broken, which doesn't speak well of God. If yes, then we have undergone some kind of fall, however one terms it. That's the dilemma that seems to present itself when speaking of the Fall or lack thereof.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

How about we were created with free will, but because humankind is fallible and weak and fails to follow God that introduces that division between us and God?

It doesn't work with the God who is completely involved in all aspects of all lives (every sparrow that falls and all that jazz), but I don't find that God works too well to explain the injustice of the disasters of the world.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
I don't see why we have to have an actual event, other than just being human and fallible, to reduce us to this current fallen state. I would suggest that those descriptions of a fall are the analogies used to explain these concepts that have been taken as more than the idea they are trying to convey.

I'm pretty much with mousethief in his replies to this.

I could add that I just can't make this work for Paul's discourses on Adam and Christ, for instance, and notably how they deal with death and life.

I'm with Joesaphat here, in his argument (if not in the conclusions he comes to elsewhere):

quote:
If the whole old Adam/new Adam paradigm is reinterpreted as a matter of 'emergence' or whatever, the bottom-line remains that we are not saved from death by Christ's death, and yes, the biblical 'revelation' on this matter is demonstrably false and, therefore, no revelation at all, only a jumble of texts which are interesting when it comes to the history of Christian theology.

And no, there's no way you can talk in terms of something being broken (or a relationship being broken off) that wasn't whole in the first place.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
How about we were created with free will, but because humankind is fallible and weak and fails to follow God that introduces that division between us and God?

Then the point at which it was first introduced becomes your "Fall."

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

[x-post]

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
How about we were created with free will, but because humankind is fallible and weak and fails to follow God that introduces that division between us and God?

I think most evangelicals would agree with that - and go on to add that as a result, sin and death entered the world (for varying values of "death" and "world"*).

==

*For the latter, even if earthquakes couldn't be immediately laid at our door it seems they now may be and anthropomorphic climate-change deniers get about as short shrift here as six-day creationists...)

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Thank you very much for coming back to this thread Eutychus.

I failed to be liberal in my neo-liberalism, again, I see that clearly now.

I apologize unreservedly.

Sorry Martin, I missed this earlier. Apology accepted and much appreciated. As iron sharpens iron and all that.

[ 19. August 2016, 19:54: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

That's MOST gracious of you Eutychus. I was being an arse. An illiberal. I failed to be inclusive, the nearly unforgivable sin in postmodern Christianity. I had assumed that you were ... on the same page. That was MULTIPLY foolish of me. And there is NO patronization in there, although it feels as if that's dangerously implicit.

That I failed you shows that I don't have a sodding leg to stand on.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

I believe that the first chapter of Genesis is a liturgical poem.
I believe that the next couple of chapters are a kind of poetic history(?)
But, as with all symbolism, they point to a factual but indescribable event/past.

I do believe in a Fall - humanity is in God's image but it is dreadfully marred and impaired and in desperate need of redemption.

As for the events surrounding the Fall - the curse and the expulsion - I think these are indicative of the seriousness with which God reacts to sin. We are SO good at minimising it, either because we want to live selfishly or because we don't want to be judged. But God sees sin as a dreadful thing that needs dreadful measures - why do we think the Messiah was killed?

Sin is serious stuff but the expulsion, I believe, was an act of mercy. Our first parents were expelled from the Garden not as a punishment, but in order to prevent them from eating from the tree of life, thus condemning themselves to an eternity of irredeemable sinful nature.
By blocking the way to eternal life in our fallen state God opened the way for redemption and grace to be provided and 'take away the sin of the world' and give eternal life to the redeemed.

However it happened, there was a Fall which has consequences for us sinners and yet, marvellously, there is the availability of grace to all who believe or who, having not heard, will be judged in mercy.

If there was no Fall, what point is there, what promise, of grace?
And therefore, what hope?

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I believe that the first chapter of Genesis is a liturgical poem.
I believe that the next couple of chapters are a kind of poetic history(?)
But, as with all symbolism, they point to a factual but indescribable event/past.

I do believe in a Fall - humanity is in God's image but it is dreadfully marred and impaired and in desperate need of redemption.

As for the events surrounding the Fall - the curse and the expulsion - I think these are indicative of the seriousness with which God reacts to sin. We are SO good at minimising it, either because we want to live selfishly or because we don't want to be judged. But God sees sin as a dreadful thing that needs dreadful measures - why do we think the Messiah was killed?

Sin is serious stuff but the expulsion, I believe, was an act of mercy. Our first parents were expelled from the Garden not as a punishment, but in order to prevent them from eating from the tree of life, thus condemning themselves to an eternity of irredeemable sinful nature.
By blocking the way to eternal life in our fallen state God opened the way for redemption and grace to be provided and 'take away the sin of the world' and give eternal life to the redeemed.

However it happened, there was a Fall which has consequences for us sinners and yet, marvellously, there is the availability of grace to all who believe or who, having not heard, will be judged in mercy.

If there was no Fall, what point is there, what promise, of grace?
And therefore, what hope?

The point as I see it, though, Mudfrog, is whether or not this reinterpretation of the fall as a marring of God's image in us entails that such a marring causes physical death. I do not think it does, death has been our constant companion and this since before there were any humans or humanoids about. To carry on, as we do, preaching salvation as a reversal of this state of affairs will not make much sense.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

Unless of course resurrection is a naturally occurring thing and has little to do with accepting Christ's sacrifice. Having been brought up an old Buddhist, I'm paradoxically happy with that. We rise and rise and unfortunately rise again, till we do it once and for all by putting our 'selves' to death as Christ did. But this is far removed from orthodox Western soteriology.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
The point as I see it, though, Mudfrog, is whether or not this reinterpretation of the fall as a marring of God's image in us entails that such a marring causes physical death. I do not think it does, death has been our constant companion and this since before there were any humans or humanoids about.

I'm not sure how many people actually hold to such a view these days outside absolute literalists.

And even they would have to admit that Adam and Eve did not die physically at once on eating the fruit - whereas the relationship they had had with God clearly did.

The way I see it the old serpent, as ever, told a half-truth. Indeed, Adam and Eve did not drop dead on the spot; but something inside did die.

At least some prominent evangelicals (Roger Forster comes to mind) have put in writing that they believe physical death to have always been part of the created order.

I think most if not all of the evangelicals I know would say that the important new element in Eden is spiritual, rather than physical death, and set aside as unimportant the issue of whether physical death existed before the "Fall".

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

To put it another way, physical death only takes on horrendous proportions if it is viewed in the absence of a relationship with God.

I really don't think it's a stretch to understand Paul when he says "death came through one man" to mean "spiritual death".

If one has a relationship with God, death loses its ultimate absurdity.

As Roger Forster (again) memorably says of Enoch, who is depicted as having a relationship with God and indeed somehow apparently managing not to die: "he walked with God - and one day he walked so far God said 'it's too late to go back now, you'd better stay with me'".

[ 20. August 2016, 10:04: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

I don't at all think that physical death came with the Fall - spiritual death does.

Don't forget, God expelled the 'Guilty Pair' from the Garden lest they 'take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' (Genesis 3 v 22)

It appears from that verse alone - or at least it's what I infer - that Adam and Eve were going to die anyway physically. In the pronouncement of the curse in verses 17 - 19 there is no mention at all of physical death being a result of the act of disobedience - pain in childbirth and hard work is all God cursed them with. Surely he would have said, "That's it, you're going to die physically when before you would have lived forever."?

If physical death were the result of the Fall it would be very explicit. It isn't. However, spiritual death is.
And what the atonement provides is resurrection, not a rescue from physical death.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

the fact that physical death was introduced by the sin of Adam is, by miles, the most widespread interpretation in Tradition, incl. in Judaism (Wisdom 2.24; 1Enoch 69.11; Genesis rabbah 8.11, 16.6; Sifra 27a, Life of Adam and Eve, Philo, Biblical Antiquities 13.8; and the Talmud pretty much everywhere. I'm not sure what you mean by spiritual death... a conditional resurrection? dying in a state of such implying annihilation? or do you believe that it's a metaphorical death which is mirrored by a metaphorical resurrection, something like feeling fully alive... I don't know. I don't mean to cast stones, I believe none of the above, I'm really trying hard to understand.

I think it's impossible to reinterpret these passages metaphorically or to spiritualise them. Paul seems to deny that his hope is 'for this life only.' "As was the man of dust, aka Adam, so are those who are of the dust.' (1Co 15.47 etc)

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

I notice that none of those sources are Biblical.

Note also that when Paul talks about death, the 'antidote' is resurrection, not just life after death - i.e.spiritual life not just a return to physical existence.

Nowhere is there a reference to physical death caused by the Fall.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
To put it another way, physical death only takes on horrendous proportions if it is viewed in the absence of a relationship with God.

I really don't think it's a stretch to understand Paul when he says "death came through one man" to mean "spiritual death".

On the contrary, Paul even envisages the death of all creation, any sentient being, being due to Adam's disobedience, in Romans 8. Creation was submitted to decay by the will of God 'in hope that the whole of creation itself will be set free from this bondage to decay and will also obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.'

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

It's again a theological comparison... 'because Adam submitted himself to sin...' God submitted him and the whole creation to decay and death.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

Well, Wisdom is biblical you protestant: 'By the envy of the devil did death enter the world.'

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

and what is this 'spiritual death' that you're talking about? What dies? What are its actual, physical or non-physical consequences? How does it impact non-human beings? how does it reversal entail a bodily resurrection 'like Christ's'? What is it?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
and what is this 'spiritual death' that you're talking about? What dies? What are its actual, physical or non-physical consequences?

I think that what is depicted as "dying" in Eden is the immediate, intimate relationship between man and God. Which is why I refer to the "fall" as a "break-up" in relationship.

As Paul has it "sin sprang to life and I died" (clearly not referring to physical death).

quote:
How does it impact non-human beings?

It's not possible to do a "before and after" comparison here because unlike the case of Adam and Eve, we don't have any description in Genesis. What we do have today is plenty of evidence of human action on the planet adversely affecting other species and the environment.

quote:
how does it reversal entail a bodily resurrection 'like Christ's'

Again, what we can observe today is that ageing brings decay, disease, and so forth. Paul depicts bodily resurrection as being the final stage in renewal of life that starts in our souls.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

As I see it, Eutychus, you're just shifting the problem about. What are the consequences of this relationship break-up with God? Annihilation of life at the disintegration of the body? Eternal punishment of some sort of 'spiritual' being? and how does this renewal of life beginning in our soul will eventually affect our bodies?

I don't even know what you mean by soul... mind? How does any kind of change/renewal of the soul entail resurrection? I'd dearly love to be able to rescue some sort of orthodoxy on the matter, but I cannot.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Does the fact that something is broken necessarily mean that something has been lost?
I cannot make this make sense. If something is broken, then what has been lost is, at least in part, the previous unbroken state of the thing that is now broken. What am I missing?

Totally with you on that one. Whether it's a broken relationship, state, whatever. I just don't understand, no matter how hard I try. It's frustrating.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Nowhere is there a reference to physical death caused by the Fall.

And nowhere is there a reference to spiritual death caused by the Fall. You're toying with words. There is a reference to death caused by the Fall, but it's an open question what exactly is meant.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
As I see it, Eutychus, you're just shifting the problem about. What are the consequences of this relationship break-up with God?

That we fall short of our own ideals, let alone God's, with knock-on consequences.

quote:
Annihilation of life at the disintegration of the body? Eternal punishment of some sort of 'spiritual' being?

Not experiencing restoration, reconciliation, resolution.

quote:
how does this renewal of life beginning in our soul will eventually affect our bodies?

I'm not going to die on a hill over precise terminology, but I think being made spiritually alive is something that affects first and foremost our relationship to the truth, and is a process in which we are gradually made whole. I don't believe this process is completed in this life, certainly not for our bodies which soon begin to deteriorate.

I'm not going to die on a hill for a precise explanation of the afterlife, either, but the hope I have grasped is that it involves healing of the consequences of evil, that it is experienced in a body that won't deterioriate, and that it will be better than anything experienced in this life.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
and what is this 'spiritual death' that you're talking about? What dies? What are its actual, physical or non-physical consequences? How does it impact non-human beings? how does it reversal entail a bodily resurrection 'like Christ's'? What is it?

You're a vicar and you don't know (even if you don't believe it) what people mean when they talk about spiritual death?

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
and what is this 'spiritual death' that you're talking about? What dies? What are its actual, physical or non-physical consequences? How does it impact non-human beings? how does it reversal entail a bodily resurrection 'like Christ's'? What is it?
You're a vicar and you don't know (even if you don't believe it) what people mean when they talk about spiritual death?

I do not. What dies? Enlighten me if you can.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

I don't know what people mean when they say they have an intimate relationship with God either, should anyone care to explain, while we're at it, or how they know that it's been broken.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I know you don't think much of Paul, but what do you suppose he meant when he said "sin sprang to life, and I died" (Rom 7:9)?

Even if you think he was just ploughing his own furrow and the fact we still have his writings and debate them is a historical accident, what do you think he was referring to?

Knowing it's broken? Does Romans 7 as a whole not resonate with you at all? I not infrequently get people describing their life to me almost word for word in terms of Romans 7; it's fun watching their eyes bulge out of their sockets when I read them the passage and show them Paul felt exactly the same way.

As to "relationship with God", I certainly didn't use the word "intimate". I mean that God indwells believers with his Spirit - the essential component of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah - and by degrees, enables them to gain a greater understanding of who he is, what is and is not in his character, and in doing so gradually changes them also.

"Relationship" is a way of saying there's something more going on than book learning, if you prefer.

John's gospel records Jesus talking in terms of eternal life as being about knowing God, and seems to frame that in terms of something other than intellectual knowledge.

[ 20. August 2016, 21:11: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I know you don't think much of Paul, but what do you suppose he meant when he said "sin sprang to life, and I died" (Rom 7:9)?

Even if you think he was just ploughing his own furrow and the fact we still have his writings and debate them is a historical accident, what do you think he was referring to?

Knowing it's broken? Does Romans 7 as a whole not resonate with you at all? I not infrequently get people describing their life to me almost word for word in terms of Romans 7; it's fun watching their eyes bulge out of their sockets when I read them the passage and show them Paul felt exactly the same way.

As to "relationship with God", I certainly didn't use the word "intimate". I mean that God indwells believers with his Spirit - the essential component of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah - and by degrees, enables them to gain a greater understanding of who he is, what is and is not in his character, and in doing so gradually changes them also.

"Relationship" is a way of saying there's something more going on than book learning, if you prefer.

John's gospel records Jesus talking in terms of eternal life as being about knowing God, and seems to frame that in terms of something other than intellectual knowledge.

I think you have to read the verse in context, ignorance of sin apart from the law. 'I was once alive apart from the law' is paralleled with 'when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.' Humans were clearly alive physically and 'spiritually' before the giving of the Law at Sinai, the death of which he speaks afterwards is also physical, IMO. The following verse, literally translated reads something like 'and the commandment that is [to lead into] life is being discovered by me [to lead] to death.' It is notoriously obscure, the Greek extremely convoluted. And I cannot see why Paul would not envisage a very physical kind of death alongside 'the death to righteousness' of which he speaks.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

Yes, Rm 7 speaks to me, and I actually do think very highly of St Paul; I merely disagree that the soteriology he laid out can still be a firm foundation for contemporary Christianity.

If by relationship one simply means the indwelling of God's Spirit, why call it a relationship at all?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I cannot see why Paul would not envisage a very physical kind of death alongside 'the death to righteousness' of which he speaks.

I'm not sure where you're getting Paul speaking of being "dead to righteousness" from. But that aside, you seem to be acknowledging that not all Paul's talk of death meant physical death, or primarily physical death.

In Colossians and Ephesians he talks about us being "dead in our sins" and being made "alive in Christ", and is obviously not referring to physical death.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

I think I too need to apologise about the tone of some of my remarks. It's just that all this high-minded talk by many Christians of having a 'personal' relationship with God, being 'alive in the Sprit,' 'spiritual death,' Jesus being enough and what have you often leaves me feeling like I'm no Christian at all.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

[x-post]

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Yes, Rm 7 speaks to me, and I actually do think very highly of St Paul; I merely disagree that the soteriology he laid out can still be a firm foundation for contemporary Christianity.

My apologies for casting aspersions on your view of Paul.

The question then becomes, if his soteriology is dodgy, what if anything are we to make of still having his writings as part of our canon? Which is far beyond the scope of this thread, indeed it's more or less where the thread that spawned this thread started.

quote:
If by relationship one simply means the indwelling of God's Spirit, why call it a relationship at all?

The New Covenant promise in Jeremiah talks of individuals "knowing" God, as does Jesus. I think "relationship" is a fair enough term.

But if you prefer, to get back to the "Fall", we could say that what is depicted is a time when God's Spirit ceased to dwell in humankind as it had before. A bit like when the Spirit left the Temple, as seen in Ezekiel.

[ETA: mutual apologies are good, especially on a Sunday morning [Angel]

I really appreciate the spirit in which you're engaging with me on this. There's a lot of mutual incomprehension to get through, and getting through it is really helpful even if we don't end up agreeing]

[ETA 2: and assuming you're ministering today, all the best in doing so. I hope you have a good enough time to end up saying "yes" to the final MW question, "did this service make you feel glad to be a Christian?". I am often pleasantly surprised to find myself answering in the affirmative against my initial misgivings!]

[ 21. August 2016, 06:44: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

Yes, I've got three services and a baptism lined up today, so I'll be too brief: should God withdraw the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, humankind would simply die and ceae to be held into being.

Furthermore it seems to me that to restrain the debate thus to the Letter to the Romans is dangerous. Paul often speaks of 'I' dying, but sometimes not as a good thing: 'In fact it is no longer I that does it, but sin in me.' as well as 't'is no longer I who lives but Christ in me.' I am quite unsure as to how figuratively we are meant to read this. When he talks about the flesh/Spirit opposition however, he sounds seriously literal to me: to live according to the flesh has carnal death as an end, not just a broken relationship, whereas to live according tot he promptings of God's Spirit leads to eternal life in a 'Spirit' body (soma psychikos)... and the flesh is doomed because it is inherited: biologically, chronologically and ontologically, from Adam's.

I've read a lot of the new (is it really new?) Evangelical scholarship trying to steer this kind of soteriology away from literalism, but I'm really not sold.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

How do you interpret passages like 'wretched man that I am: I see in my own limbs another law at war with the spirit's, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my limbs. Wretched man! Who will rescue me from this body of death?... with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.'

'for if you live according to the flesh, you will die (in the flesh) but if you live according to the Spirit and by it put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.'

Have you tried reading Doug Campbell's huge book on this matter?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
should God withdraw the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, humankind would simply die and ceae to be held into being.

I think there's room for a distinction between 'common grace' by which God keeps the current order of things going, and the indwelling of the Spirit in a believer's life making them "alive to Christ".

I'd venture to suggest this line of thinking can be found in the gospels, particularly John, as well as in the epistles. John has Jesus coming not to further condemn an already condemned world but to save it, which suggests it has something to be saved from.

quote:
't'is no longer I who lives but Christ in me.'

I don't have the time or the scholarship to look into this in depth, but since I am currently preaching through Galatians, I was surprised to notice that this well-known and oft-quoted phrase is preceded in the Greek (at least in the interlinear I checked) by the words "I live" (putting paid to all those "let go and let God" types).

In short, we live amid the tension of the "now" and the "not yet" in which the working out of our salvation is something ongoing and we struggle against relapsing into a former view of ourselves and how to please God.

quote:
I am quite unsure as to how figuratively we are meant to read this.

I'm quite unsure too. Controversy rages over just who "I" is in Romans 7 and some people even think it refers to a state before being in Christ. All I can say is that it seems to mirror lots of believers' experience.

quote:
When he talks about the flesh/Spirit opposition however, he sounds seriously literal to me: to live according to the flesh has carnal death as an end, not just a broken relationship

Understanding just what Paul meant by "the flesh" is another vexed question. I have seen where a belief that it means just our bodies can end up (in short, a belief that there are no sins of the intellect) and prefer to see it in terms of "our former identity without Christ".

On the latter basis "the flesh is doomed" would mean "life without being made alive in Christ by the Spirit is doomed" and I don't think it's that clear that biological or chronological inheritance from Adam really underpins Paul's arguments.

Whatever "the flesh" means, though, my contention is that having to cope with its doomedness (?) is not an original component of the human condition but a flaw that was introduced through a breaking-off of relations with God; that humanity once existed in a beter condition.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think there's room for a distinction between 'common grace' by which God keeps the current order of things going, and the indwelling of the Spirit in a believer's life making them "alive to Christ".

Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

I see 3 options to account for the imperfectness of life:

- God is responsible for all (except the choices we make). Carnivorous lions were intended - if only as a way to evolve a perfect antelope

- God and the devil share responsibility for Creation. God intended vegetarian lions but somehow the devil corrupted the laws of physics so that they came out carnivorous

- We are responsible for the badness. Lions were actually vegetarian until we came along and started making bad choices.

I don't believe in a Fall - a before and an after with humankind at the trigger point.

The idea that at some point in human prehistory the laws of physics all changed in response to some human act seems to me the same sort of philosophical dead-end as the Matrix. Or the idea that the universe was created with fake memories and a fossil record of animals that never were. The proposition contains the root of its own immunity to evidence.

So I'm left with the choice between options 1 and 2. God as less-than-fully good or less-than-fully powerful.

Do you worship goodness or worship power?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."

That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
The idea that at some point in human prehistory the laws of physics all changed in response to some human act seems to me the same sort of philosophical dead-end as the Matrix.

Can you point to anyone on this thread espousing such a view?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?

An excellent question, and one which I will use as ammunition next time I talk with these people.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?

Jesus isn't 'there' in the bread and wine even in the most orthodox forms of RC speculation on the matter, 'space' is an accident, all the accidents of the bread and wine remain even when the substance changes at consecration. Not that I believe it, but Christ is not 'spatially present' in the elements.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So what does "real presence" mean?

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So what does "real presence" mean?

It's an unfortunate way of saying transubstantiation, but if by 'real' one means existing with any of the accidents that any thing that 'beg in this world possesses: quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time, location, situation (or position), action, and passion... then, at least in RC terms, it's rank heresy.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?

figuratively... I don't believe in ghosts. Unless you mean some ultimate beatific state in which/whom 'God will be all in all' a la St Paul, again.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So do NO substances have location, or only THIS substance?

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So do NO substances have location, or only THIS substance?

Only the divine substance/being, Mouse. That's precisely the point: when the host in the ciborium passes by, it's not God himself passing by... and bleeding hosts etc. are really dodgy.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So how can it be Christ's body if it isn't Christ? [Help]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
An excellent question, and one which I will use as ammunition next time I talk with these people.

I must stay out of this BUT ... where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is. That's it. In the two or three. Nothing 'more', whatever that could be. Where two or three are gathered in His name, that IS His presence. That IS Him. A configuration of Him. Not a locus where He turns up 'more', as well.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So how can it be Christ's body if it isn't Christ?

Don't know if this was directed at me. In scholastic RC terms: it is Christ's body, but we must not think of it as moving from place to place, or being circumscribed, or having a certain weight, a certain taste, of being different from anything or like anything... all the accidents remain those of the bread and wine. It makes some sort of sense: unless we are to believe that there's 'a bit of' Jesus in the chalice and 'another bit' in the ciborium, and yet a third 'bit' staying in the aumbry, and another in the church next door. Locality is an accident in the created world.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.

nah, it's a figure of speech.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.

What perfect affirmation of a disjunct.

[ 22. August 2016, 08:37: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

And of course no attention is EVER paid in this universal declaration of magic to context.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
God might not always be clear, but I don't think he goes out of his way to obfuscate.

Luke 8:10

10 He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,

“‘though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.’

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.

There is no 'showing up' for me. No invisible theophany. Even if it's there. It's something I'm invincibly ignorant of. And I'm happy for everyone for whom it is an article of faith which invalidates mine. That doesn't invalidate theirs. It's entirely and sufficiently metaphoric for me, going with joesaphat. As in communion, which I nonetheless appreciate more than ever. I walk with God (make up that metanarrative) BEST when I'm out walking alone, I feel. Jesus seemed to do the same. And still not very well, me. What He thinks about it He doesn't say. Although Pete Green knew (Oh) Well!

Two's company: My wife and I used to walk together and take turns praying (she has Achilles tendinopathy now). We still do it when driving far enough. It's an interesting exercise as we explore at the time. Serial monologues. Diatribes. Lectures. Shopping lists. The artificiality, the strain of it is ... obvious and explored. So we loop back to gratitude. 'Praise'. The tension is unmanageable when one tries to pray whilst writing this. Two's company.

So, to context, a brother errs. You know does something loveless that causes harm, that really needs apology, rectification, atonement, restitution. He won't hear you. Take an honest broker or two (TWO or THREE in total, notice that?) from the fellowship, a witness or two. Whatever follows, done in love, all the way up to the top, whatever is AGREED in love, ASKED in love, by TWO or THREE, is bound or loosed in heaven. Is done by our Father. A done deal. Sanctioned. "Yeah, go for it guys, you have My blessing." And yes that can be extrapolated from nicely to all that Christians socially engage in. Or alone. In love. In Christ is yes after all. As Jesus nicely allows for in the context.

If it has to mean mandatory mysterious things for others, God bless them and I'm happy to agree to walk together with them if they can with me.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.

I think it's more than a figure of speech. I think that at least part of what he was saying was that when at least two or three people are gathered in his name, the Body of Christ is constituted in a tangible way.

That said, I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.

A figure of speech that means.... what?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
If it has to mean mandatory mysterious things for others, God bless them and I'm happy to agree to walk together with them if they can with me.

Now that I can sign up to. Including the mandatory mysterious things you appear to hold to from where I'm sitting.

It's my observation that the Bible "works" as a key means of God imparting his Word to us by his Spirit, for a huge range of interpretative approaches.

I meet people who read the Bible at such a fundamentalist/naive level to my mind that I have a job keeping myself from laughing out loud, yet it seems to transform their lives and produce the fruit of the Spirit. I see the same thing in people whose theology seems so liberal or deconstructed to me that it has me climbing the walls.

I think the real challenge, embodied in Martin's comment above, is to not only to recognise ourselves in one of these places and perhaps different places over time, but also recognise the Spirit at work through other interpretative frameworks that seem woolly or childish to us. "Who are you to judge another man's servant?".

As a regular preacher to a wide constituency of people I find it a real challenge to preach with integrity, reflecting my convictions, in a way that will edify all my listeners rather than violate their consciences or cause them to stumble, no matter where they are on this particular map.

And I think similar things apply to the understanding of Scripture across different ages.

For my part, I still think there was a time "in the beginning" when things were as God designed them in a way that they aren't now. I can't get past that without the narrative breaking for me. For now.

But I'm happy to be walking, albeit virtually, with those who've interacted with me here.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Thank you, brother. WHAT?! What "mandatory mysterious things"?! I hold to none but those we share creedally in and around Jesus. Explain yourself Sir! If you wouldn't mind. Awfully.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

You say things that are wholly mysterious to me, and seem to hold to them pretty mandatorily as far as you're concerned (well, until you repent [Biased]

). Even post-modernists can be hidebound, you know [Biased]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Bugger. Fair enough. Hoist with muh own compulsively gnomic petard.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.
A figure of speech that means.... what?

Sometimes, I wonder if it's not the Christian version of the minyan: you don't need ten righteous Jews to have a synagogue... or maybe that God honours what we agree on.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I'm intrigued too.

Nick Tamen above: I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.

I've never heard this, but it fits Jesus' Jewishness far better than Greco-Roman literalism-mysticism.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.

I cannot, it's not widespread, it's my own.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.
I cannot, it's not widespread, it's my own.

Your own and others' own. [Biased]

As I said, I've heard it more than once over the last 20 or 30 years.

I can't say how widespread it is, but I'll see if I can find some sources.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

Joesaphat, I hope you're sitting down, because I'm pretty sure I've heard this at least once before, too.

(One of the reasons there is basically never a Jewish religious service in my prison is because there are never ten Jewish inmates...)

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Hmmmmm. Been composing a deconstruction of Romans 7. Suffice it to say I find it VERY easy to resonate with Paul. Always have. Becoming a raving postmodern liberal CANNOT change that. Sin, rebellion, rabid ruinous lust are REAL. Are human. Mine. We are at our most obviously violent when two years old. My earliest memory is of just having bitten my baby sister at that age. I don't remember biting her. But HAVING bitten her and the FEAR and guilt of it all. We just get subtler after that.

The Fall is the human condition. Exacerbated by social evolution: greater and greater opportunity for evil with less and less excuse.

And The Fall is personal. MY human condition. It has NOTHING to do with myths. I don't need ANY myths, including the nonetheless troubling ones of supernatural sentient evil beings, of a fallen angelic realm, to BE guilty. To explain my sin.

The shock of the Christ event, conception-life-death-resurrection DOES cut through that for me. Is my way out of CONCURRENT meaningless unfulfillable desire, of brokenness, of loss, of suffering, of feckless evil ending in oblivion. Gives me hope. By the Spirit I accept, but have no idea how or why me.

I'd rather Jesus HADN'T died, hadn't HAD to die, not to satisfy some arbitrary divine justice that WE impute and He HAD to believe, but to get my attention, but nothing else would.

My utter disbelief of a mythical fall, of an impossible failure to rise (Fulke Greville's 'Created sick, commanded to be sound' comes to mind) doesn't mean I'm not a fallen, failed (successful?!), miserable sinner saved by Jesus' blood.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I'm intrigued too.

Nick Tamen above: I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.

I've never heard this, but it fits Jesus' Jewishness far better than Greco-Roman literalism-mysticism.

Martin, I'm not sure why you'd suspect there was no mysticism involved in Jesus's Jewishness. Judaism had its own beliefs about God's presence in the temple, in the gathered congregation and elsewhere.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
And The Fall is personal. MY human condition. It has NOTHING to do with myths. I don't need ANY myths . . . .

But the human condition, individual and universal, is precisely precisely the matter of myth. The issue too often is that people confuse a myth bring factual with a myth bring true.

[ 23. August 2016, 22:27: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

Sorry for the double "precisely."

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Joesaphat, I hope you're sitting down, because I'm pretty sure I've heard this at least once before, too.

(One of the reasons there is basically never a Jewish religious service in my prison is because there are never ten Jewish inmates...)

Oh no, I'd be delighted. I like not to feel like an oddball. Even though the passage was probably devised to allow early Christians to exist and worship apart from the mainstream. I've never ever read it anywhere, however. God, I hope N T Wright did not write it, I could not bear to agree with Wright.
[Waterworks]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

You may be reassured to know I have never read more than a few pages of the guy.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You may be reassured to know I have never read more than a few pages of the guy.

I think he writes so much, so fast so as to make it impossible for anyone to disagree with him. You cannot say anything he has not said or denied somewhere on page 842 of his 26th book.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Aye Nick, the narrative is full of weirdness, but that's a different category to running away with a figure of speech.

Posted by Joesaphat (# 18493) on :

In the Daily Mail (don't ask, it's a weird voyeuristic addiction) this morning there is a video of a python slowly suffocating, eating then regurgitating an antelope. God's perfect plan. Glory!

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I was hoping the debate had moved beyond "vegetarian lions"... [Roll Eyes]

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