The Evangelical Universalist Forum

JRP's Bite-Sized Metaphysics (Series 425)

Theology Philosophical
#1

[This series is part of Section Four, Ethics and the Third Person. An index with links to all parts of the work as they are posted can be found [url=https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.com/t/sword-to-the-heart-ethics-and-the-third-person/1335/1]here.]

[This series constitutes Chapter 46, “The Children of the First Sinners”. Since I’m running a little behind today, I’m going to post the whole chapter up at once instead of splitting it into two series as I normally would.]

[Entry 1]

I have argued that recorded history–even the history recorded by people who do not follow my own tradition–indicates that the tendency to act intransigently, in willful rebellion against what we perceive to be true, has been a perennial characteristic of our species. Because God would not have created us automatically in rebellion against Him (or against as much of Him as we could perceive), then our progenitors must have fallen into this state; and I think I can argue that the number of these progenitors must have been small, and the percentage of ‘fallens’ within that number must have been large: for the whole human race, as it stands now and as it has stood throughout history, exhibits the characteristics of sinful rebellion.

(I am not arguing this from the worldwide prevalence of stories that suggest humankind was once in a better relationship with God, heaven, Nature, and/or each other, but have since ‘fallen’. These could, I suppose, be explained as the result of an innate human resistance to our actual state of being. (The Fall must be only a fable, because so many cultures seem to remember it?) Even so, such a resistance is interesting. In fact, any ‘resistance’ to what would otherwise be considered a ‘natural’ situation, is significant. At any rate, having arrived at this conclusion on other grounds, I do pause here to acknowledge the existence of such stories.)

Sword to the Heart: Ethics and the Third Person
#2

[Entry 2]

Such a rebellion would have changed the synthetic shape of the original sinners–the shape synthesized by God out of a combination of His own intentive actions and the mediation of a neutral ‘playing-field’ of reactive Nature, itself also actively created and upkept by God. This synthetic shape would have been linked interconnectedly between spirit and body; and consequences to the relationship between that unity of spirit and body would have followed from rebellion. This degradation of our physical and mental status would have been allowed by God in order to minimize the abuses of power which would follow from the rebellion–abuses God would restrict insofar as possible while still fulfilling both love and justice to the sinners.

The Unity of God’s own transPersonal self-existent love and justice, entails that God shall choose to act eternally to fulfill love and justice even to His enemies–and this concept has massive implications for any subsequent theological conclusions I will (and ought to) draw.

But one of the more unsettling implications faces me now.

[Footnote for [u]next entry: Technically, a species is distinguished by its lack of breeding with other creature-groups, although two species of the same genus could theoretically produce viable offspring. In this case, I don’t know whether the fallen or unfallen humans could or could not breed with any other similar creatures from which they may have been raised–or even whether they were raised from a previously existent creature-group at all! The face-value meaning of my own scriptural tradition is somewhat confusing on this point; even if we were raised directly from mud, there is some question about whether the first such humans are interbreeding with each other in the story, or whether they are interbreeding with other similar creatures. Fortunately, I can set such questions aside for the purposes of this book.

(Although I will also say that I become humorously annoyed at direct creationists who rhetorically complain about how under evolutionary theory we were all raised from slime. Oh, no, of course not, we were raised from clean dirt! Slime, dirt, I’m good with it either way…)]

#3

[Entry 3]

These original sinners, having rebelled against God, would find themselves existing as, in effect, a new species–perhaps related to prior species from which they had been previously raised (if that was how God accomplished their creation), but still distinctly different as derivatively active entities from those close relatives. Yet they would also be distinctly different from the sort of entities they had been before the ‘Fall’. As creatures in a created unity between active spirit and reactive matter, that unity would still hold: for they would still be derivatively active (and thus personal) creatures, yet also would still occupy the space and time of material Nature.

The relationship of this derivative unity of ours to physical Nature, to matter and energy, results in a physical shape to the organ through which the unity is most acutely focused: our brains. Our fall as a species would have consequences for that shape. Yet what contributes, physically speaking, to the shape of our brains?

We know now that the chemicals of our genetic code serve this function. New cells replace or grow onto other cells throughout our natural life, even in our brains, according to processes governed at least in part by the constituent ‘shape’ of that genetic code.

The change of the synthetic shape at the moment of the first rebellion would therefore entail a corresponding change, either directly or indirectly by God’s will, in the functionality of our genetic code, so that our unity as a living and efficiently functional organism would be preserved. (The change might be progressive over a lifetime, or even over successive generations; but there would also be an immediate change somewhere that would make the crucial difference.)

Also, such a pervasive change would be a signal even to the most stubborn of original sinners, that something drastically wrong had occurred–something that could be compared to an ideal state–something that needed to be corrected for their own good.

#4

[Entry 4]

But whatever affects our genetic code, also affects our children.

The natural result would be that if these original sinners began to breed, they would produce more creatures of their new sort–creatures with a synthetic shape twisted by the choices of the first progenitors.

This, I repeat, would be the natural result. But speaking only of the natural consequence leaves the actions and choices of God out of the account. The next question is: would God allow this to happen?

In a way, the answer to this question is obvious: for here I am, a creature of this type who inhabits a world filled with similar creatures.

Given this, and given that I have already decided that God exists and has certain relationships to the natural universe, then I conclude that God clearly would allow the results of the ‘sin of Adam’ to be passed on to future generations.

But a recognition that this in fact has happened, does not of itself explain why God let it happen.

#5

[Entry 5]

Some people may be satisfied with the mere idea that God let it happen, and so we should not bother ourselves further with questions about it. I would reply that this attitude hardly reflects a personal relationship with God as a Person.

Other people may say that since God has let it happen, He must have had a good reason, and since they trust Him in other regards, they are willing to trust Him here, too. I think this attitude is very much better! Yet I also think it still falls short of the mark. To honestly wonder why, and to seriously want an answer, and to not have an answer yet, is one thing. But to give up wanting to know why, as a choice on our part–even as a choice apparently based on a real trust in God–is to set aside our share of the responsibility in maintaining a personal relationship with God.

Such a closing of the eyes is, instead, a sign of a lack of faith in God: it is a sign that we do not trust God to do His part in relating to us. To wait patiently, keeping an eye out for solutions to a problem, with all resources at our disposal, ready to act and searching for light meanwhile, is to have an active faith in God as a Person. To shut our minds to problems because, deep down, we do not ever expect an intelligible answer, is to believe that God does not care what we think about Him.

“We shall understand by and by” has long been stripped of its meaning in merely ‘popular’ theology, and a totally opposite meaning has been perversely grafted to the phrase: it now effectively means, to many Christians, that we shall never understand–therefore, we ought not to look now. And it is just as faithless to maintain that we ought not to expect any worthwhile or useful answer until we reach ‘heaven’–for that attitude reinforces a tendency to be lazy servants here and now.

In some ways, the sceptical unbeliever can represent a most faithfully prudent attitude: for such a sceptic may detect a discrepancy in the love and justice of God, and so may refuse to follow or sanction a belief in such a deity.

“How could God let that happen!?” such a sceptic demands, with a righteousness that is faithful to God in truth, while others who claim to have faith in God dare to be content with the vague suspicion–or worse, the outright claim!–that the God Whom they follow is not just!

#6

[Entry 6]

Let me therefore face directly the implications of my own existence, as a person who was born with the mark of the sin of Adam.

Could God have prevented the children of the original sinners from being born in a ‘twisted’ shape?

I see no intrinsic contradiction to this proposal, so I conclude: yes, He could have–either through sheer miraculous power, or else by forbidding, through decree or through exercise of power, that the original sinners should have children. Similarly, He could have prevented me from being born in this condition: the condition of being a ‘fallen man’.

So why would God have allowed fallen humans to be fruitful, and to multiply? If my own tradition has accuracy, why would God even command us to multiply our numbers, and yet not fix the problem from the outset?

That God could not ‘fix’ Adam and Eve (the original rebels of our species, although technically they need not have been only two in number) through a sheer act of His power, I have already deduced; for their problems stemmed from willed actions of their own, and their cure would require their own active repentance–a ‘change of mind’ which itself would be hampered by the change they had already effected in themselves by their rebellion. But as for their children, from ‘Cain and Abel’ down to you and I: none of us chose to be in this condition from our birth.

Let me remind my reader that I confess myself to be a willing sinner–I know I have made choices to flout love, justice, and other characteristics of ultimate reality, in favor of my own wishes at the expense of people. Insofar as that goes, I am no better than the original sinners, whether they are human Adams and Eves or the archangel Lucifer.

But that type of perversion is not what I am discussing here. I want to know why God allowed the sin of our human progenitors to affect the rest of us consequentially, in our bodies and in the relationship of our bodies to our minds.

As usual, if I speculate as though these original people existed in a historical vacuum, then I do not know if I could ever find an appropriate answer. But when I remember, that whatever perversions I may have been saddled with I am still a willing sinner also, then I have a standard by which to proceed.

Let me turn my question back upon my own head, then. Why is it that other people suffer thanks to my sin? Why does God not negate the harmful, baneful results of my own actions, sparing those who find themselves standing in the paths of effect?

#7

[Entry 7]

(I remind my reader that the relative innocuousness of my own sins, makes no difference to the principle which I am considering here. So far as the direct fact of my active rebellion goes, I am no better off than people like Hitler.)

The first answer I reach is: I do not know that God does let every possible baneful consequence from my actions affect other people. On the contrary: I know I find myself thanking Him, that by providential circumstance other people have been spared from suffering which might have followed from some sin of mine.

This does not, by itself, provide a solution to my question, for if even one minor suffering of a victim resulted from a whole history of (otherwise silent) human sinning, then the question of why God would allow such an effect would remain viable. Yet I do find it to be of some comfort to recognize, from my own experience, that other people are sometimes (or even often) spared from the results of my sins.

I next notice, that such consequential suffering depends not only on God’s permission, but also on the characteristics of Nature. You and I live together within an essentially neutral playing-field; indeed, I concluded many chapters ago that such a field is in fact necessary, given your and my existences as people. Nature, as it is, exists by the will and power of God; and God retains the capability of introducing effects into Nature.

But I also concluded that there would need to be some self-limitation on God’s part, to how far He would act within Nature. If God manipulates me totally, then I am only a sort of sock-puppet, and not a true creature. If God does not let Nature be Nature, then by tautology Nature is not Nature. Yet Nature (not necessarily this Nature, perhaps, but some Nature) is necessary for you and I to be as we are. God can only introduce effects ‘into’ Nature by usually letting Nature be itself. And as a creation of God, self-consistent to its own derivative degree, Nature exhibits cause-and-effect relationships. These can be modified by God, up to and including the annihilation of Nature to any extent; but so long as God intends Nature to be Nature and to serve His purposes (including the purposes related to you and I as derivative individual people), then God will, by His own choice, only modify Nature’s behavior to some degree.

#8

[Entry 8]

I repeat: by itself this conclusion does not solve the problem I am now considering. It could only do that if I knew (which I do not) that God’s negation of any external effects from my sinful choices would require such a massive uprooting of Nature on His part, that Nature effectively (or usefully) would cease to exist. For what it is worth, I do think it likely that given today’s situation–the situation of human intransigence that has existed for all our recorded history–God would be unable to stop all pernicious results of all our sins without simultaneously unraveling the portion of space-time our species currently inhabits.

But in the case of the original sinners, who almost certainly had to be few in number (very likely as few as two individuals), I do not see that such a danger to Nature (localized or not) would have been forthcoming. I think God could have allowed their children to be what their parents no longer were. Indeed, if God grew us organically through the mediation of a biological process, then He would already have acted at least once in such a fashion, when He created the first sentient humans. And if God raised our first progenitors directly from the clay, or somesuch similar action, then He would have already accomplished the same type of reorganization even more dramatically!

Either way (or along any variation of two such extremes of subtlety and outright power), for God to do so again within the seed and/or womb of the first fallen humans would have been no more dangerous to Nature’s existence as Nature, than the creation of the first humans themselves (and probably no more dangerous to Nature’s viability than any other intentive act God can take within the natural system).

So, there must have been further reasons why God, in the case of the original human sinners, did not spare their children the fate of being born as ‘fallens’.

#9

[Entry 9]

Still, the general principle involved here is worth remembering: in order to preserve the character of Nature as Nature, God allows Nature to react naturally to actions introduced into the natural system.

If God allows Nature to retain its character, then what about my character–or the character of my distant forebears? We are derivative actors; we are people who are people, and who have our own personal character. If God second-guesses and immediately abrogates everything I do which happens to displease Him, then would He be treating me as a responsible person?

Here, I arrive at a frightening and humbling realization.

God’s love and justice are never set aside, even for sinners.

I am a sinner. God loves me and does justice to me, sinner though I am. If He only let results He personally preferred to follow from my choices, then He would not be showing love to me, nor would He be acting justly to me, myself. It would be worse than my being a mere sock-puppet who only seems to be a real person: I would be a real person under slavery to a tyrant Who grants me only a useless legal fiction of freedom!

Yet unless He enslaved me in this way, then sooner or later someone might suffer for something I do, that they had not done.

It is because God loves me, a sinner, that the innocent suffer for my transgressions.

Thank God, I have reason to believe that God does spare some creatures, to some degree, from the evil I choose to do. Yet the underlying principle remains in effect–because God loves me, He lets some of my evil actions produce results imprinted by the character I have given to those actions.

Should you be angry at God for allowing people to suffer for my wrongs? Or should you instead be angrier at me for taking advantage of the love God shows to me?

And dare I suggest you remember that God shows you the same love, by letting your actions also have consequential effects–even if those effects are ones God would have preferred not to happen?

Persons who have not done a particular evil action, nevertheless suffer the results of that action–because God loves the sinner, too.

The innocent suffer for the sake of sinners such as I.

#10

[Entry 10]

There is a further terrible purpose in such consequences for my sake–the results stand as a reminder to me, if I will only open my eyes, that what I am doing is wrong! It is love and justice to me, that I should be given such opportunities, despite my willful intransigence.

Is it love and justice to those who suffer? No; but that is my fault–not God’s.

I therefore find no intrinsic inconsistency in the conclusion that God has allowed other creatures to suffer by the sin of the original sinners. It is certainly terrible, and even horrible–I think it is something every person needs to contemplate for herself, so that the full cost of our actions may be understood more clearly; for we sinners are all still contributing, even today, to the sin of Adam.

Yet when we are speaking of the first children of the original sinners, then still a mystery remains. If Adam and Eve should somehow suffer for the sake of Satan, that is one thing. But for God to allow the first human sinners to beget victims of their sin, who are then born as victims from birth–that is something else again. Where is the justice in this?!

A moment ago, I noticed that those who suffer from our sins serve as living examples to us that sin has consequences. A woman who sins in her pride may, in her pride, still find it easy to discount or disbelieve the damage done to her own soul (or even to her body) in consequence of her actions. But it can only be harder to deny responsibility for our actions, when the results of those actions are staring us in the face. The sins of the fathers may be made manifest in the next generation, for the sake of the fathers’ understanding of sin and its results.

(As I write this, I think of babies born with deformities and addictions, thanks to the abuse of the bodies (and souls) of their mothers and fathers. How can any man or woman see this, and not resolve to render justice and charity to each other and to their own bodies!? How?–by refusing love and justice when these seem to be leveled against themselves…)

Even so, this purpose would be served only by the first children of the first sinners–not by further generations, who can only make the point redundantly. So, if the effects of the first sinners on themselves are passed in some measure to their children, why not stop the effect at the second generation?

#11

[Entry 11; finale for this series]

Whatever natural consequences followed in the wake of the shifting of the synthetic shape, those natural consequences still could have been halted by God at that point without (probably) undue risk of abrogating Nature itself. Yet, God let it continue.

And, I admit: even the allowance of one subsequently twisted generation seems rather suspicious. Would the sinners not have been better off being saved by God from sin first, before breeding later?

I think there is a double-answer involved: two answers, which turn out to be connected. If God should let a fallen Adam and Eve have children–if more than this He outright commands it–then humanity as a group must have a task God expected them to try to perform, even in their fallen state. Yet common sense tells us that the fallen state of Man must be more inefficient than our original unfallen state. It makes more sense for God to restart the species in an unfallen state, as soon as feasible, than to allow it to continue in such a state.

Yet, here we are. Adam and Eve may have needed a salvation that did not consist of God sheerly ‘fixing’ the problem, but their children could still have been started correctly themselves, to fall or not to fall later upon their own choices as responsible entities.

The point is this: whatever genetic damage resulted from the twisting of the synthetic natural/supernatural ‘shape’ of the original sentient humans–whatever natural consequences resulted, to the fundamental units of their bodies, from the Fall of Adam and Eve–God must have had the power to fix it for the next generation; and a contemplation of God’s love and justice indicates that He really ought to have done so.

Since He evidently did not–and since I am already convinced on other, prior grounds that God exists and has certain characteristics–what shall I conclude?

There must have been–there must still be–something else involved in the problem.

Something not merely reactive, like Nature.

Something making its own choices to affect our offspring.

Something actively sentient and with intricate power over Nature.

Something able, and willing, to rebel against God.

Something–or, rather, someone–other than the original human sinners.

And that is who I will discuss in the next chapter.

Next up: The Sinners Before the First Sinners (and the end of Section Four)]