The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Open Theism and the Origin of Sin

Featured Writers Dr Thomas Talbott
#21

Aahh! :sunglasses: yes I am familiar with those principles
 Thank you.

I have to say a big thank you to both of you because this debate is opening up areas to me that I haven’t really ever come across but that have a huge impact on some of the brick walls that I hit with the concepts of God and timelessness. I have never come across any Christian yet who would say that God doesn’t sit in a timeless location in an overarching super-reality and who can’t therefore know all future choices exactly.

Funnily enough this has brought to mind conversations with my grandmother years ago who would answer my questions by saying that God does know all future events but chooses not to remember certain stuff at certain times (cute I know - she was 93 when she died back in 2000 and a staunch Plymouth Brethren lady).

Please continue


#22

Jeff: I have never come across any Christian yet who would say that God doesn’t sit in a timeless location in an overarching super-reality


Tom: Welcome to the party! Can I get you something? What are you drinkin’?

Jeff: This has brought to mind conversations with my grandmother years ago who would answer my questions by saying that God does know all future events but chooses not to remember certain stuff at certain times (cute I know - she was 93 when she died back in 2000 and a staunch Plymouth Brethren lady).

Tom: VERY interesting! My opinion of the Brethren just went up a notch! (It wasn’t ‘bad’ to begin with though.)

Open theists don’t all adopt exactly the same explanations for just how it is God apprehends the truth about the temporal becoming of the world. Some actually do what your grandma did. They just say God “chooses not to know” some things (in this case what our future free choices are). I understand Christian philosopher Dallas Willard takes this approach. But most open theist thinkers would criticize this move. It’s not “foreknowledge” that’s the problem. It’s “fore-truth” (if you will). The question is who or what determines the truth about what I freely do? I’m not timeless or eternal, so if the truth about what I freely do IS timeless or eternal, then I can’t be the one determining or grounding the truth about what I do—whether God chooses to know that truth or not. What we need to do is ground the truth of what I do in my self-determination. How do “I” (a temporally bound entity) “bring it about” (temporally, by determining my choice) that it’s eternally true that I make the choice in question?

Besides, God “choosing not to know” sounds just a bit suspicious. God would have first to know, or have some way to identify or tag, just those items he doesn’t want to know. But that would mean knowing them at least at some point (which is what this move is designed to avoid). And it would definitely seem to undermine omniscience understood as ‘knowledge of all truths’.

Some open theists loosely say there just aren’t any ‘truths’ out there about future contingencies and leave it at that. Others say there are ‘truths’ about what we’ll freely do but that they’re “impossible to know.” Bill Hasker goes this route. Still others deny the principle of ‘bivalence’ (which says that every proposition is either true or false). They say propositions positing what free agents will do in the future are neither true nor false, so not knowing them doesn’t undermine omniscience since it’s still the case that God knows all “truths.” And lastly others (myself, Boyd, and growing majority we hope) affirm bivalence but expand the scope of future-tense propositions to include truths about what “might and might not” happen.

It gets SO anal and complicated you can’t imagine! Lots of gymnastics. Sometimes you just gotta smile.

Jeff, I recommend Boyd’s God of the Possible. Short and sweet. He’ll lay it out for you nicely, and he does a good job of describing why this is an important practical question about how we live.

Tom

#23

Thanks for another excellent post, Tom, this one on the role of the will in belief, trust, and love. You and I certainly agree–as almost anyone would, I suppose–that simple empirical beliefs, such as the belief that fire can burn and cause terrible pain, are not explicitly chosen. Someone might choose to walk near a fire, or to place a hand on a hot coal, or to experiment with fire in some other way, and relevantly similar choices might play an important role in someone’s discovering the true nature of fire. But once the consequences of such choices are experienced, the resulting belief that fire can burn and cause terrible pain is not itself the product of some further choice, much less of some libertarian free choice. For discovering the truth about something is very different from manufacturing a belief in oneself by an act of will–which is not even psychologically possible in many cases.

We also agree, no doubt, that our religious beliefs are typically a lot more complex than simple empirical beliefs, and the ways in which these more complex beliefs involve the will are more subtle, perhaps, as well. For belief in God, as religious people typically understand it, goes far beyond a mere intellectual assent to the proposition that God exists; it also includes, as you point out yourself, such attitudes as love, trust, and gratitude. As you also point out, the fact that Paul never chose to receive a revelation of the risen Lord hardly entails that he could not have willfully chosen to misinterpret it. So are love, trust, and gratitude any more an explicit matter of will than simple empirical beliefs are? Here is where my own view is probably more radical–more Augustinian, if you will–than many Arminians would accept. As you know, I categorically reject Augustinian theology insofar as it excludes the absolutely clear Pauline statement that God is merciful to all. But I also agree with the Augustinians that faith and the ability to trust in God are in the end gifts from God. In the words of St. Paul: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this [the faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

Quite apart from any appeal to authority, moreover, Paul’s view seems to accord perfectly with my own experience as a child. I learned at a very early age, for example, to trust my mother implicitly–not because I decided to trust her, but because I discovered her to be altogether trustworthy. I also learned to love her–not because I decided to love her, but because she first loved me and demonstrated her love in thousands of ways. I have no doubt that certain free choices, if you will, were an important part of the process where¬by I discovered my mother’s true character. For I was just as disobedient and snotty at times as any other child and just as rebellious during my teen years as many others are. But the free choices I made, both the good ones and the bad ones, merely provided my parents with additional opportunities to demonstrate their true character, and at no time in my life could I have freely chosen, so I believe, not to love them or to separate myself from them altogether. There was simply never any motive to spurn the love of someone who always put my own interests first. And similarly for God, our supremely perfect Mother and Father: We learn to love him because he first loved us and will continue to demonstrate throughout all eternity, if necessary, his faithfulness in meeting our true spiritual needs and in satisfying our heart’s desire in the end. Accordingly, our free choices, whichever way they go, merely provide God with additional opportunities to demonstrate his true character and the true nature of his love for us.

For these reasons, I always find it bewildering when someone like Jack Cottrell insists that “every sinner is able to make his own decision of whether to believe or not” [see “The Classical Arminian View of Election,” in Chad Owen Brand (ed.), Perspectives on Election, p. 121]. For even in the case of complex religious beliefs, which no doubt include elements of faith, trust, and love, the role of the will, as I now see it, is essentially this: It determines the conditions under which God can impart the gifts of faith and trust without bypassing our own reasoning processes and without violating our unique personalities. It determines, in other words, how God can respond most appropriately, given the lessons we still need to learn, in finally reconciling us to himself. But this has no bearing at all, so far as I can tell, upon God’s ability to meet the relevant conditions over an indefinite period of time. For one thing, our control over our own choices does not in general extend to their long-term consequences in our lives–which, more often than not, we can neither predict nor control. These consequences are sometimes just the opposite of what we might expect. If I freely act on the false belief or the illusion that I have the skill to ski down a treacherous slope, for example, a fall and a broken leg may, quite unexpectedly, shatter that illusion to pieces; and if, because I have misconstrued the conditions of my own happiness, I repeatedly pursue my perceived interests at the expense of others, I may eventually discover, again quite unexpectedly, the error of my ways. Indeed, because their consequences can be so effective in shattering our illusions and in correcting our misguided judgments, our immoral and destructive choices may sometimes be more useful to God in transforming us than a more virtuous choice might have been.

Anyway, I suspect that so far you will find little to disagree with here. If I am wrong about that, then I’ll look forward to your further clarifications. Otherwise, we can perhaps move to the controversial question of how it is that sin enters into the world. In particular, how are we to account for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin? I realize that you, Jason, and Pat, among others, have already made some relevant comments here. But I also invite additional comments from you or anyone else following this thread.

My thanks to all who have contributed to the discussion so far.

-Tom

#24

TomT: As you also point out, the fact that Paul never chose to receive a revelation of the risen Lord hardly entails that he could not have willfully chosen to misinterpret it. So are love, trust, and gratitude any more an explicit matter of will than simple empirical beliefs are?

TomB: You captured it well. That’s the key question.

TomT: Here is where my own view is probably more radical–more Augustinian, if you will–than many Arminians would accept


TomB: This will likely mean that we each get to the same outcome (UR) via different routes. For you appear to be answering the question (“So are love, trust, and gratitude any more an explicit matter of will than simple empirical beliefs are?”) negatively. I think the role of the will with respect to loving relations is not just another example of empirical belief. I’ll want to argue that God ‘cannot’ get the relationship of love he desires with us if he doesn’t leave us enough room (via ‘epistemic distance’) to determine how we shall relate (what possible meaning we decide to attribute) to the world of our experiences, more precisely, God’s actions toward us.

Let’s take the example you give:

“I learned at a very early age, for example, to trust my mother implicitly–not because I decided to trust her, but because I discovered her to be altogether trustworthy. I also learned to love her–not because I decided to love her, but because she first loved me and demonstrated her love in thousands of ways. I have no doubt that certain free choices, if you will, were an important part of the process whereby I discovered my mother’s true character. For I was just as disobedient and snotty at times as any other child and just as rebellious during my teen years as many others are. But the free choices I made, both the good ones and the bad ones, merely provided my parents with additional opportunities to demonstrate their true character, and at no time in my life could I have freely chosen, so I believe, not to love them or to separate myself from them altogether. There was simply never any motive to spurn the love of someone who always put my own interests first.”

You end by saying “there was never any motive to spurn” your mother’s love, but you had just admitted to having spurnned that love by “free choices” you made to be disobedient and to misrelate to that love. So the fact that you were disobedient and freely chose to misrelate to love appears to make my point, viz., that when it comes to determining ourselves (in love) in relation to others we are inevitably free to do otherwise. However obvious was your mother’s love, you nevertheless found “room enough” (“reason enough”) to misrelate to it. You weren’t temporarily insane or otherwise irrational when you freely chose to misrelate, so it must have been the case that however obvious was your mother’s love on one level, there nevertheless remained a measure of rational “wiggle room” wherein you were capable of misapprehending, misconstruing, and misinterpreting (or whatever the case may be) that love and hence of misrelating to it. Otherwise, how DO you account for the responsible nature of your choice to misrelate to your mother’s love?

TomT: For even in the case of complex religious beliefs, which no doubt include elements of faith, trust, and love, the role of the will, as I now see it, is essentially this: It determines the conditions under which God can impart the gifts of faith and trust without bypassing our own reasoning processes and without violating our unique personalities.

TomB: I want to make sure I don’t misunderstand you here. If the role of the ‘will’ is to “determine conditions under which God can impart faith” (without objectifying us), then how are you Augustinian? It looks to me as if you here have the ‘will’ freely determining when and how it comes by faith in God, i.e., freely determining whether or not it receives the gift of faith (and salvation). That’s how I’m taking “can” in “
under which God ‘can’ impart faith,” i.e., we determine whether God ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ actually impart his life to us. But surely as an Augustinian here you must mean to say that our ‘will’ determines the conditions under which God “in fact does” impart faith. By “conditions” you don’t mean to say the impartation of faith is “conditional upon” the free exercise of the will. You mean to say the impartation of faith is always given “within the actual conditions of our lives freely determined.” We get to determine what kind of sinners we are, how screwed up we become, how fractured we are, etc., but we’re not free to say “yes” to God (except in the sense that our “yes” is just the effect of an irresistible impartation of faith to us).

Am I following you?

TomT: Otherwise, we can perhaps move to the controversial question of how it is that sin enters into the world. In particular, how are we to account for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin?

TomB: We can move on to that. Looks good. I’ll just not that your Augustinian understanding of salvation (though you universalize it unlike him so that eventually God determines all through the gift of faith) will likely turn out to be a kind of dividing fork in the road that takes you to UR one way and me another.

TomB

#25

TomT-

The next question you wanted to move on to is: How are we to account for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin?

I have yesterday (the 4th) and today off out here in Iraq, so I’m gorging on online posting since I know things we’ll pick up and I’ll get busy. But maybe I can save us a bit of time (‘cause I know you’ve got so much on your plate) if I go ahead and offer something of an answer to this question. Again, no hurry at all on responding.

But first I want to comment quickly on something I said in my immediately preceding post:

You end by saying “there was never any motive to spurn” your mother’s love, but you had just admitted to having spurnned [sic] that love by ‘free choices’ you made to be disobedient and to misrelate to that love. So the fact that you were disobedient and freely chose to misrelate to love appears to make my point, viz., that when it comes to determining ourselves (in love) in relation to others we are inevitably free to do otherwise. However obvious was your mother’s love, you nevertheless found ‘room enough’ (‘reason enough’) to misrelate to it.

I just wanted to comment on your “motive” to make sure it’s clear that I agree there is never any ‘justification’ or ‘reasoning that justifies’ our misrelating to God, i.e., reasons that make our misrelating the right thing to do—given the full truth of the matter. No perceived reason for misrelating can be THAT kind of motive. However, we can be ‘rationally motivated’ and yet ‘wrong’ (though there are always reasons enough for choosing to act righty). This is precisely what I mean by God’s leaving us ‘room’ to determine ourselves responsibly. God provides us reasons enough to choose rightly, but that same ‘room’ leaves us space enough to construct ‘possible reasons’ for misrelating. Like the original “I will ascend and be like the Most High,” which describes a ‘perceived motivation’ or ‘reason’ to misrelate. The speaker could only think this ‘responsibly’ if he can think it ‘rationally’ and ‘freely’.

On to why evil was inevitable once God chose to create.

Without taking the creation narrative literally, it seems to be the case that evil was already present when God endows human being with the divine image. Evil predates the human fall into sin. So evil per se was already present. Nothing is said to explain this arrangement, so we can only reason back to a plausible explanation, though I think Boyd has a point when he says the Bible isn’t concerned with speculating on such questions, it simply presumes that evil is not of God and that we’re to oppose it as far as we’re able. At the same time, he speculates as much as anyone else in positing a primal fall with Satan (and his cohorts) and the warfare that ensues between God and Satan, a warfare into which humanity was placed and which humanity seems to have been designed to play a part (God tells Adam to go and “subdue” the earth, suggesting that not all is well).

Where angelic beings appear to have been given a measure of freedom in which to determine themselves relative to their created purpose, so were we given a measure of freedom in which to determine ourselves relative to our relationship to God and our created purpose. And freedom implies risk. From my perspective the inevitability of human sin and evil is grounded in the risk entailed in our being free.

So the question I have to face is, why would a loving God run such a risk? That is, why would he create a risky world in which evil’s inevitable corrupting presence would universally pervade all creation if such evil doesn’t play some necessary role in the fulfilling of God’s purposes? And my answer would be: Love is worth the risk. More precisely, the ends to which God purposes us are worth the risks involved in granting us the freedom we require in achieving those ends. It’s NOT about freedom. Never has been. Freedom is just a ‘means’. God doesn’t value freedom for freedom’s sake. He values the beauty and love that we can embody and reflect. Freedom is just the metaphysical price-tag God has to pay to get us to that sort of existing.

So the ‘possibility’ of sin/evil is entailed in the freedom that humanity’s created purposes metaphysically require. But the inevitability isn’t so entailed, per se, in the freedom we’re granted. In other words, God’s purposes require that we be free (and thus ‘possibly’ evil), not that we ‘actually’ become evil. Evil is definitionally opposed to God and God’s purposes. It’s an obstacle to overcome. God’s good purposes are achieved “in spite of” sin, not “through sin’s indirect help” as if evil makes a positive contribution to what is real and beautiful by providing a dark backdrop against which divine and created beauties may now more brightly shine. This might mark a real difference between us.

But having said that, I think God had to know ‘statistically speaking’ that sin would inevitably rise and infect creation. I mean, given time, increased populations, and the societal influences upon individuation, God’s got to know, “Dang, this project is gonna go REALLY bad before it eventually becomes what I want.” But God goes through with it because he knows “what it will become” is worth “however bad it can get” on the way. So eventual sin is inevitable given these factors, but its “actuality” isn’t entailed metaphysically-speaking in the freedom we’re granted the way its “possibility” is entailed in that freedom.

I think you, TomT, want the “damage sin does” to be PART (caps is just emphasis) of the project, part of the PURPOSE for which God creates. You want evil to ‘contribute’ to the explication of divine and created beauty by shaping the form of ‘the beautiful’. Essentially, a marriage can’t be as beautiful and intense an experience of love as it can be unless it experiences the pain of an adulterous affair so that we live to tell the survivor’s story. This is why for you, though God can at any time act upon the human intellect to guarantee compliance (Augustinian regeneration), he doesn’t do so. He backs off and leaves us alone so that creation can go wrong and do the necessary damage and in turn make the required contribution to shaping beautiful outcomes in ways God desires.

Am I following you? If so



then this has grave consequences, I think, for our doctrine of a necessary God who “is” love (and you’ve argued in print that “God is love” is a metaphysical description of God [Great paper by the way!]). And some of us would argue that “God is love” (in the case of a ‘necessarily existing’ God) means that God is necessarily and unsurpassably aesthetically satisfied, perfectly ‘satiated’ (as it were) when it comes to loving relationality and intensity of beautiful experience. God’s experience of loving relationality and beauty is as intense as it gets, and it’s THIS experience that constitutes God essentially (and necessarily).

So there’s no lack or weakness or failure in God’s experience of love, and that includes whatever contribution we want to say creation makes to God. I don’t see that it’s the case that creation “improves” upon God’s being or essence (his experience of loving relationality or the intensity of his experience) though I think that’s just what we end up having to admit IF we say contingent evil contributes to the experience of love by shaping the form and diversity of loving expression. If the “shape or form of beautiful experience” per se can be “improved upon” through the contingency of sinful becoming, then (a) the ‘necessity’ that characterizes God’s being can’t have anything to do with KIND of beautiful experience God has of Godself trintarianly-speaking (and that’s hugely problematic for me at least), and (b) we end up attributing a kind of ‘goodness’ to evil, giving it a “capacity to shape the form of love” in ways that increase the intensity and perfection of love’s experience (and that’s hugely problematic for me too). The Greek Fathers got it right on I think when they said evil is “pure privation of the good,” and that’s all it can be. But if it’s privation, then it can’t be the case that it “plays a positive role” in the explication of God’s purposes. It can only get in the way so to speak.

I’m rambling. Sorry!

Tom

#26

Hi TomT,

I agree with you that salvation is strictly a gift from God. And I disagree with Arminians who place limits on the circumstances of God giving the gift of salvation. Perhaps our difference in doctrine (what I classify as a secondary doctrine) is that I believe that humans can reject the gift of salvation. I wish to ask you the following. Do you believe that there are no possible circumstances that a human can temporarily reject the divine gift the salvation?

#27

Hi James,

A quick question. You say you disagree with Arminians who place limits on the circumstances of God’s giving the gift of salvation. But it seems to me that if we’re able as you say (and I agree we are) to say ‘no’ to the gift of salvation, then we’ve placed a least one limit on God’s giving the gift of salvation. Our freedom to say ‘no’ to God defines (in part of course) the conditions in which God is able or unable to deliver to our experience the gift of salvation.

Beyond this, I don’t know how to separate ‘no’ and ‘yes’ in terms of freedom. If we can responsibly determine our own ‘no’ then that entails the same ability to determine our own ‘yes’ to God. All this boils down, for me, to the simple fact that we’re able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any invitation God extends. “Invitations” assume this much. It’s that simple. I know this places me in Jack Cottrell’s company (criticized by TomT), but I fail to see what’s so amazing about the claim that we are able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God’s invitations. It can be claimed with humility and gratefulness. We can’t barge into God’s presence uninvited and make demands, of course. Nor can we ‘initiate’ movement toward God. But we can ‘respond’ to divine initiatives whenever and wherever they’re offered. Again, that they are offered at all assumes this much. But if we say we determine our response, then have we not placed limits on the conditions under which salvation is experienced? Sure seems so.

T

#28

Hi TomT and TomB,

You both caught me off guard. :blush: I need to take a step back.

I’ll begin by clarifying my view. My view fits under the Arminian umbrella because I believe the New Covenant is a conditional covenant (John 3:16, Romans 3:25, Ephesians 1:13) while a conditional covenant by definition has a condition that can be genuinely accepted or rejected. And I agree that Paul teaches that faith in God is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Humans cannot generate this faith. This faith is a gift from God while humans can accept or reject this gift like any other gift.

TomT,

I wish to ask you a foundational question that’ll help me with additional discussion on this topic: Do you believe that the New Covenant is an unconditional covenant or a conditional covenant?

#29

Hello all,

I’m so far behind in this thread that I may never be able to catch up. So I’ll just try to clarify where I agree with the Arminians (and open theists) and where I agree with the Augustinians. First, I am closer to the Arminians and the open theists in my belief that free will, indeterminism, and even sheer chance are genuine realities in God’s creation; these are genuine obstacles, in other words, that God must work around in order eventually to destroy sin and spiritual death, to impart faith in a perfectly rational way, and to reconcile the world to himself.

But second, I am closer to the Augustinians in my belief that God’s grace is irresistible in the end; that is, no one can resist it forever. We can no doubt freely resist it (and in fact do resist it) for a season, but God has set things up in such a way that no one who is rational enough to qualify as a free agent can resist it forever. In that respect, God is like the grandmaster in chess who will inevitably checkmate a novice in the end and do so without controlling or even predicting the novice’s individual moves. I explain this picture further under the topic “The Essential Role of Freewill in Universal Reconciliation,” which you can find at the following URL:

Here is an additional comment from my reply to my critics in Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge, *Universal Salvation? The Current Debate,” p. 264:

So the general picture is this: We start out in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion–a context in which sin is virtually inevitable. But the consequences of our choices, the bad ones no less than the good ones, tend to resolve the ambiguity, remove the ignorance, and shatter the illusions that make bad choices possible in the first place. But why would God start us out in a context where sin is virtually inevitable? My current hypothesis is that, for all we know, he had no choice in the matter, provided that he wanted to create any persons at all. At the risk of making this post incredibly long, here are a few paragraphs from my paper “Why Christians Should Not Be Determinists: Reflections on the of Human Sin,” *, July, 2008:

My thanks again to all who have contributed to this conversation. Unfortunately, time constraints will continue to limit the number of my posts. But I will definitely read everything posted in this thread.

-Tom*

#30

TomT writes:

We’re definitely on board here, Tom. I couldn’t agree with you more!

One side note, a theological question that’s plaguing me right now, is the question of whether ‘death’ is a result of the eventual moral failure you speak of or an already present factor in the created order. Paul (in Rom) clearly seems to say death is through Adam’s (sin). Thus, most think that humans (and animals for that matter) were immortal prior to the rise of human sin.

But I don’t get this. Entropy seems to be a ‘good’ thing, in place as a natural feature of creation. The sun can’t warm the earth, nor can flowers germinate without entropy. Unless a seed fall into the ground “and die” it abides alone. So “decay” is a natural feature of the created order. And besides, if we adopt an evolutionary model of human origins, mortality is a given and death precedes the emergence of consciousness and the moral sense in humans.

Some I know just bite the bullet and say Paul was wrong in Romans. Death didn’t “enter through one man.” Adam wasn’t a particular individual and death didn’t enter the cosmos through human sin. But attributing theological error to Paul is a huge step.

Anybody know how to reconcile Paul’s statements (in Rom 5 and 1Cor 15) with natural mortality?

I’m torn.

TomT

#31

Perhaps Paul meant spiritual, not physical death. Just a thought.

#32

That’s an option I guess. But the difficulty is that Paul elsewhere talks about what can only be ‘physical’ death in similar terms (1Cor 15), and even in Rm. 8.10 he says, “If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Obviously they’re not dead and buried, but they are “mortal,” i.e., susceptible to physical death. They’re ‘going to die.’ So Paul seems to link our being mortal to our sin, which can’t be the case if mortality preceded sin.

I’m finding it hard to avoid the conclusion that Paul believed Adam was a particular human being whose sin introduced mortality into the human race. I don’t mind saying NT authors wrote within the cultural and religious givens of their times. But Paul builds his theology on this being the case. That’s tough.

Tom

#33

It sure is tough!

But there’s another obvious barrier to accepting Tom T’s implication:

To say death CAME to and through Adam, via his actions, can only mean (it seems to me) that it came/followed from a previous state of life. Spiritual death only has meaning if the previous condition was spiritual life. There is simply no way I am able to formulate a scenario where there is nothing, then ambiguity and ignorance and indeterminism, then death, then life.

Further, (and hopefully not repeating myself too much here, but I’ve not heard a response to this particular problem) what on earth could the Genesis writer have had in mind when he has God saying this initial state of creation was “good” if in fact all he meant by “good” was “all the necessary ingredients are now present so that eventually, through much pain and suffering and trial and error and evil etc etc a fully informed and rational individual will emerge who will be henceforth eternally safe from these evils.” That leaves one with an incredibly strained state of affairs where there is such a thing as good evil. Well, if such a thing is possible, why bother even making a distinction between good and evil – which is entirely counter to the whole idea of sin as problem in the first place.

So I currently still can see no way around the apparent fact that goodness/life preceded evil/death. Which is to say there really was a fall from a noble state to a depraved one and that our salvation involves a very long process of being recreated back into the original state – with the major difference now being we all now have “histories”. (Except then the problem of any new creatures coming on to the scene. Are they supposed to simply accept our stories and histories? Can they avoid the seemingly unavoidable ambiguity and ignorance just by accepting our stories? If that’s the case, why not just accept God’s words in the first place?? ie Did God tell you NOT to eat of the tree??)(ie does our sin mean there will never be any more creating by God?)

Not sure I’m much closer to resolution here TGB.

TotalVictory

Bobx3

#34

Hi Bob-

When TomT says “our first parents came into being with the same sinful dispositions and moral weaknesses common to the rest of us,” I take him to mean not that our created, given disposition (our ‘nature’) is itself “sinful,” but rather that being free it’s becoming sinful was an inevitability. I don’t see how God can call it “good” and it also be “sinful” as given by God. But in TomT’s view what God gives is a set of capacities in which, as they mature, personhood and the moral sense emerge. That sin will eventually arise (I’m talking my view now) is a given. Too much from the surrounding context and culture is already working on and shaping the process of individuation.

I’d probably word myself a bit differently, wondering if “weak” is the right word. If our ‘given natures’ are ‘good’ (and I’d say they’re a ‘grace’—the capacities to become one with God can only be a good and gracious thing), it’s not that they’re “weak” with respect to being capable of performing what they’re naturally equipped to do. It’s just that (and this is my view), there’s no way God can start human beings out fully developed and finished-products from the start, with solidified characters that love unfailingly. Those just are the metaphysical constraints of “finite being.” God can’t insulate human being (i.e., ‘human nature’) from all susceptibility to misrelation and sin. And given the context and nature of how our self-understanding emerges over time, the bumps and bruises and challenges of life are inevitably going to influence the sort of decisions we make once we emerge as responsible, self-aware, hypostatic beings. So like I said, I think God’s got to know, “This thing is gonna get really bad before it becomes all I want it to be,” not because the end product requires evil to play a positive role in shaping things to come (it doesn’t; TomT and I disagree here), but in the sense that sin’s eventuality is entailed in the open, risky, emergent sort of universe that was the ONLY context in which God could have finite creatures become loving partners.

So, I don’t think TomT means to say our given natures are themselves sinful. But they are ‘weak’ in the sense of ‘susceptible’.

Bob: To say death CAME to and through Adam, via his actions, can only mean (it seems to me) that it came/followed from a previous state of life.

TomB: Yeah, something like “life” preceded the fall. God and Adam “walk in the cool of the day,” right? That’s a pretty serene picture. Things are going well. But it couldn’t have been “fulfilled human being” in the sense of human being as God intended it “to become.” Adam wasn’t spiritually dead prior to the Fall (sure), but he wasn’t spiritually complete either. He was still just setting out on the journey; hadn’t crossed the finish line yet. Prior to the Fall, God’s not on deck announcing “Mission Accomplished” in other words. It’s not “nothing,” and it’s certainly not “spiritual death”; but neither is it “spiritual maturity.” Maybe “spiritual infancy”?

Bob: What on earth could the Genesis writer have had in mind when he has God saying this initial state of creation was “good” if in fact all he meant by “good” was “all the necessary ingredients are now present
”

TomB: Are healthy infants “good”? Sure. But they’re not mature. They’re what infants are supposed to be. But if they’re still 8 lbs and 24 inches a year later, they’re no longer “good.” Something’s wrong. So “good” can describe a thing’s being what it ought to be when it ought to be it, given its purpose. I think that’s what God looks at creation and sees. But it can’t be “good” in the sense of “having accomplished and fulfilled its purpose,” because that’s still off in the distance, right? God says, “Tend the garden, multiply and subdue the Earth.”

Bob: “
so that eventually, through much pain and suffering and trial and error and evil etc etc a fully informed and rational individual will emerge who will be henceforth eternally safe from these evils.” That leaves one with an incredibly strained state of affairs where there is such a thing as good evil. Well, if such a thing is possible, why bother even making a distinction between good and evil – which is entirely counter to the whole idea of sin as problem in the first place.

TomB: I feel ya. Yeah! I think it depends on ‘how’ you figure sin into the equation. If you think ‘sin’ NEEDS to occur because it plays some role, makes some positive contribution, to shaping outcomes in ways God desires
then I think we have problems, because that makes sin a positive moment in the exposition of divine and created beauty, which is to say evil ain’t all that evil after all. But if sin is just an inevitable bump in the road, an inconvenience, even if an inevitable one, something “in spite of which” God will nevertheless fulfill his purposes, then I think things fare much better.

I’m not any closer on understanding whether or not Adam was a particular, historical man and how to bring pre-Fall mortality together with Rom 5/1Cor 15. I have to say that I’m more sure that human beings were created mortal than I am sure what Paul means. And I don’t like the feeling!

TomB

#35

Oh yes – I am very sympathetic to the learning/growing dynamics Tom T is underlining. To this however we need to try to fit in the equally important idea of moral responsibility; which is to say that if Adam and Eve really are so immature and ignorant (I agree this certainly seems to be the case) it would seem quite odd that they bear such grand moral responsibility doesn’t it? So responsible in fact that the 1 Cor 15:22 idea seems to imply some kind of moral responsibility borne for the entire race!! (Which is of course nicely mirrored by the even greater moral responsibility of the Christ. Score another point for UR!)

Further, it seems to me the entire bible is written in tones of this responsibility as being quite real; that is, Adam and Eve ought not have done this. Somehow they knew better. Which of course means that sin’s “inevitability” can’t help but be construed as some kind of “excuse” for sin – which also runs counter to the bible ethos it seems to me. This then brings me right back to a prior condition from which they “fell” – which should have been avoidable.

So I really do feel trapped in this circle I guess; immature yes, but also responsible. Well, how responsible CAN immature beings be? The bible does seem to suggest that those who have the “law” don’t have an excuse; should know to do better. Can’t we say that the command not to eat of the tree WAS the simple law they had?? (Except I simply cannot see God only aspiring to His creation raching this “law and order” level of worship; ie maybe Koholbergs level 4 of moral development
)

Thus I am very curious to know how you read Colosians 1:16-20. I have always assumed (maybe just ingrained by my subculture) that there really ARE unfallen intelligences in the universe (eg maybe other planets with sentient creatures, but certainly unfallen angels) who certainly must be subject to the same limits in attaining mature and informed love as Adam and Eve are said to be limited by.

So my questions might be

a) why did they NOT sin – if sin is somehow “inevitable”

(I’m suggesting that somehow it is possible to learn all necessary information using “conceptual possibilities” to guide me. That is, I shouldn’t NEED to experience electrocution by sticking a papaerclip into the electric outlet once I have learned what electricity is and how pain sensors in my body work.)

b) However, if they were not themselves sinners, why then the need to be “reconciled” with the rest of we sinners?

(I’m suggesting that maybe reconciled means something more like “sealed and solidified into trust” so that even sinless angels had a sort of tentative quality to their love/trust of God UNTIL the events of the cross. So the Cross settled forever the truth that the “sin experiment” really WAS a total failure and is utterly unviable as a system for ordering ones choices and life. Or something like that
 This seems confirmed by the notion that, because of the Cross, we are now MORE than conquorers


Now God’s willingness to let this conceptual possibility of sin – is it or is it not a viable system? – play out for the benefit of all I see as incredibly wise and gracious and open; though without doubt has caused Him a great deal of pain. The question of sin’s viability as a valid system, while not strictly necessary, certainly had to be answered – once raised. And God’s patience in letting the thing fully play out frankly astonishes me. But it’s a patience that simply cannot leave a single created sentient being “behind” – score another point for UR!

So in a very real way, the Christ story and history really is the “only” way to the Father; true “salvation” really is only accomplished by beholding the witness of the Cross. ie that is knowledge and information of who God REALLY is that, when fully apprehended, WILL make the universe safe from sin rising ever again.)

Or something like that


TotalVictory

Bobx3

#36

BOB: This then brings me right back to a prior condition from which they “fell” – which should have been avoidable.

TOM: If not individually avoidable the how individually responsible? Right.

BOB: So I really do feel trapped in this circle I guess; immature yes, but also responsible. Well, how responsible CAN immature beings be?

TOM: Exactly. Some chance we had. I’m like
what?

BOB: Thus I am very curious to know how you read Colosians 1:16-20. I have always assumed (maybe just ingrained by my subculture) that there really ARE unfallen intelligences in the universe (eg maybe other planets with sentient creatures, but certainly unfallen angels) who certainly must be subject to the same limits in attaining mature and informed love as Adam and Eve are said to be limited by.

TOM: Well, a host of angelic beings didn’t succumb. So somebody at least stuck to the plan.

BOB: So my questions might be: a) why did they NOT sin – if sin is somehow “inevitable”

TOM: It seems inevitable that ‘some’ will fall, not that ‘all’ will fall.

BOB: b) However, if they were not themselves sinners, why then the need to be “reconciled” with the rest of we sinners?

TOM: They don’t need to be redeemed I don’t imagine.

BOB: And God’s patience in letting the thing fully play out frankly astonishes me. But it’s a patience that simply cannot leave a single created sentient being “behind” – score another point for UR!

TOM: Yeah. I get tired thinking about it all! I’m tempted to just say God has a conversation with himself something like this: “I’d like to create this cool universe, and with it beings that can become faithful, loving partners. And I’ll incarnate as a member and so open up the fullest participation possible to finite being. Yeah. Hmmm. But if they have the needed freedom to become loving partners, they’re bound to screw up royally, which means having to suffer to rescue them as well. But in the end it’ll all be as I imagine. Ah heck, let’s do it anyhow!”

Something like that. Maybe.

TomT

#37

My thanks again to all who are contributing to this discussion. Here is a quick question for Bob, who wrote:

Setting aside the creation of Adam for a moment, my question concerns your assertion that spiritual death has meaning only if the previous condition is spiritual life. I’m wondering how you would apply this assertion to yourself, to me, or to the rest of Adam’s descendants. Would you claim, for example, that each of us starts out spiritually alive at birth or at some time thereafter and then falls into a state of spiritual death after that? If you do make such a claim, then are you not rejecting the traditional Christian idea that we are all in a kind of bondage to sin and death from the very beginning of our earthly lives? And if you do not make such a claim with respect to the rest of us, then what theological advantage is there in claiming this for Adam?

Or consider the final sentence of the above quotation. Is there no way that you can conceive of a scenario in which you and I do not exist, then emerge in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, indeterminism, and separation from God (which separation is already a kind of spiritual death), and then finally become reconciled to God? If ignorance, indeterminism and an initial separation from God are all metaphysically necessary conditions of our very emergence as rational agents who interact with the world on our own, so to speak, why isn’t it a good thing for God to meet these necessary conditions?

These are all terribly complicated issues, of course, and some disagreement over them is no doubt bound to occur.

-Tom

#38

Two posts up I signed off as TomT. Oops. Big mistake. Sorry.

TomB

#39

Hi Tom T:

When you say this –

it only serves to enhance and deepen your credibility – as far as I’m concerned. So thanks for that, and your attitude (deep respect for this sort of problem) from which it emerges.

Your questions are interesting, and appropriate, though I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that I have almost zero ability to identify with Adam and his plight and dilemmas. Nor am I able to equate his “death” with mine; perhaps that’s just indoctrination that this all was, somehow, “his fault”. (Eve too I guess; though somehow it seems not worth getting all “sexist” about blame here!!) I was born to this plight; Adam was not. At least that’s the way the story’s told. (Also it might be important to note none of us have teased out, as a separate issue, this idea of “nature”
 ie if it was not in Adam’s “nature” to sin, why did he?)

My statement about death necessarily following life seems to me a general and generic statement; that is, death is a state which has no context unless it follows after this thing we call life – be it physical or spiritual. So I apply this to myself (and you or anyone else) in that this is all I’ve ever known. Adam clearly could not say that his post fall state was all he had ever known – could he? There was his initial state – then, there was his post “event” state. And he simply had to see this and the huge differences. Now scared and hiding and naked. You and I however have always been scared and hiding and aware we were naked.

I realize of course that my awareness of death and what it really is, is fundamentally vague; and probably is for everyone if they’d ponder it a bit. Those immersed in sin and enjoying it, seem to have little concept that they are “dead”. So I think it’s important to admit the term “spiritual death” is a slippery and vague one.

Thus it’s not that I am, as you ask

so much as I don’t see how I can reasonably read the intent of the text otherwise. Surely you are not denying that the entire context of the story suggests that things really WERE “different” for Adam; just because I have no experience of that difference need not mean it’s not strongly suggested by the text and story
 So maybe one could say I feel far more bound to the limits and outlines of the story than do you??

You then ask

which is of course a very pertinent question; one which I’ve agreed makes good sense
 Except for the fact that this aspect doesn’t seem to be supplied, or even hinted at, by the Genesis narrative. The obvious implication is that Adam was different – and his “act” had far more wide-reaching effects than any of mine ever would. This might make the story more awkward for me, but I don’t get to change the story to fit my ideas. I see no hint whatsoever that Adam was in a state of spiritual death from the get-go; Garden walks and small talk with God, being instructed that I am to name all the animals, even being “told” by God not to eat of the tree – all give a real flavor of initial goodness and intimacy that seem quite foreign from the

which you suggest must predate spiritual life. (How often I’ve felt I would kill for one of those quiet garden walks with God. I’m just not as confident of Adam’s immaturity as I am of my own. Maybe too much projection, and wishful thinking in my theology
 :slight_smile: :slight_smile: )

All of which makes me incredibly curious what you do take from the creation story Tom?? Understand that I find what you are saying makes great sense to me – from the perspective of we who start out with whatever the heck it is we inherited from the act of Adam; the act to which, for example, 1 Cor 15:22 refers.

So no, Adam doesn’t feel like a brother at all Tom; but you do!

Enjoying the conversation.

TotalVictory

Bobx3

#40

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your response to my questions. At the end of your response, you put to me the legitimate question of what I in fact “take from the creation story.” I would like to think that my Irenaean interpretation of the first human sin requires or entails no assumption at all that the text is historical inaccurate. For whether we interpret the first human sin mythically, allegorically, or as literal history, I think the Irenaean interpretation does far more justice to the story itself (and certainly accords better with the Jewish understanding of it) than the Augustinian interpretation does. As I see it, in other words, the Augustinian understanding of original sin is no less confused than the Augustinian understanding of limited election. Accordingly, for anyone who might not have caught the beginning of this conversation in another thread, I’ll point out that I explain the Irenaean interpretation at the following URL:

The question I put to myself is this: Even if we take the Adam and Eve story as literally as the most conservative believer would want, how, exactly, did Adam differ from any other toddler? Well, in the story he was certainly larger than a toddler in terms of physical stature and certainly had no human parents. But how was his relationship with God any different from a toddler’s relationship with its loving parents in a case where the parents indeed love their child? If, like the child he was in all but appearance, Adam had no knowledge of good and evil, does that not seem like more than a hint, perhaps even an explicit statement, that he started out in a context of moral ambiguity and ignorance? Yes, like any other toddler who walks and talks with its parents, Adam also walked and talked with God. But did he have any real conception in the story of who God is? Was God anything more than a loving authority figure to him even as a set of parents might be little more than loving authority figures to a small child? Adam no more understood, it seems, the full import of the command he received not to eat the forbidden fruit than the typical toddler understands the full import of the commands (or the instructions) it receives from its parents during the early stages of its emergence as a fully rational being.

Now it certainly seems misleading, I will readily grant, to say that Adam started out spiritually dead, even as it seems misleading, to me at least, to say that our children (or the descendants of Adam) start out spiritually dead. For even though Paul identified separation from God with spiritual death, our initial separation from God at the beginning of life, insofar as it constitutes an essential stage in our emergence as distinct centers of consciousness, seems like a special case for two reasons: First, we do not think of young children as being morally responsible for, or guilty on account of, the conditions in which they first emerge and begin making choices; and second, we typically expect our children to start out in a context of ambiguity and ignorance. When I think of my two precious granddaughters, for example, I tend to think of them as innocent and naĂŻve rather than as spiritually dead; and in the story of Adam and Eve, our first parents seem to me, at any rate, to start out as innocently as any other child. But why suppose, I wonder, that their predispositions would have been any less egocentric than those of any other innocent child or that their actions would have been any less the product of ignorance and faulty judgment?

Of course, Paul did write as if Adam were a single individual who represents the entire human race in a special way and whose sins had important consequences in the lives of his descendants. But isn’t that just what one would expect? Why shouldn’t the first human being and the father of the entire human race represent the human family in the first stage of creation even as other fathers might represent their own families in various social and legal matters? And if, according to the Decalogue, the sins of the fathers can be visited upon their children “to the third and fourth generation,” might we not expect the sin of Adam, however inevitable it might have been, to have important consequences in the lives of his descendants as well? But again, I see no reason to view the Genesis account of the first human sin as an account of a fall from a higher state to a lower one, or as a fall from a state of moral perfection to one of moral corruption.

As I said before, however, these are complicated and controversial matters; and I would expect many Christians to disagree with me in this matter.

Thanks again for your latest post.

-Tom