The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Open Theism and the Origin of Sin

Featured Writers Dr Thomas Talbott
#41

Tom:

Again, huge thanks for the stimulating and thought provoking conversation.

I have three brief comments/questions that I’m curious how you handle.

  1. First, I think you are right that it is unfortunate that spiritual “death” is used by Paul when in fact it seems what he is talking about is more like spiritually inert or maybe non-viable. Since, as you suggest, maybe Adam and Eve really had nothing to fall from, (ie they didn’t have a previous higher moral awareness) maybe the simple statement by God – “eat of the tree and you will die” – refers to physical death, and not spiritual death (since there was no spiritual life present that could die.)

While it’s fair to assume God’s admonition was something like the equivalent to a two year old of “don’t run out into the street” and you make a good case for the idea that Adam and Eve could not comprehend the full import of the admonition not to eat, God certainly knew what He meant. Well, what did He mean? Maybe they couldn’t comprehend, but shouldn’t we be able to? Whether it was physical death or spiritual, can we not at least gather that by eating of the tree, things would change – they would be different henceforth. This strongly implies movement from one state to another which is seen as bad and harmful and not necessary.

Yet in the scenario you present, God actually knows we need to eat of the tree (against His explicit command) in order to arrive at the eventual maturity He hopes to achieve in us. Obviously, that notion makes me very uncomfortable.

  1. Second, I’m curious to know what you think Paul means when he says (1 Cor 15: 51&2) we will be “changed” in the blink of an eye? I’ve always gotten the sense it was a change “back” to some sort of “pre-fall” state, which, if the pre-fall state was actually immature and morally ambiguous, would hardly be desirable. However, if what’s happening right now, in this vail of tears, in our slow and painful growth toward insightful maturity and moral discrimination that would always intelligently chose God, why bother with, or celebrate, or desire, this abrupt change? (To say nothing of the frustration that if it was this easy, why not just “infuse” that change from the start??)

  2. Third, I’m most curious to know your view of the nature of the “reconciliation” that the Cross effects for the “things in heaven”. (Col 1:20) Seems to me reconciliation follows estrangement; but I don’t see the heavenly things as being in that state like we sinners are. If these “things” are created intelligent beings (eg angels?) then presumably they could only experience moral emergence to maturity via the very same egocentric (plus ambiguity and ignorance) pathways that birthed our first parents. Are they really in the same boat that we are??

Ironically, I see this text, and the idea that even unfallen angels benefit by the Cross very much supports your explanations of how we grow to moral maturity. That is, even they (I’m assuming they are not sinners and have achieved significant maturity already) were unable to reach complete understanding and maturity until actually witnessing the death of their creator.

Anyway, am feeling a bit guilty at hogging your time here Tom, but know I am very appreciative!

Thanks!

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#42

I know your post was addressed to TomT, Bob. But I thought I’d like to air my ideas in response just for feedback and/or correction too. :wink:

Bob: Since, as you suggest, maybe Adam and Eve really had nothing to fall from, (ie they didn’t have a previous higher moral awareness) maybe the simple statement by God – “eat of the tree and you will die” – refers to physical death, and not spiritual death (since there was no spiritual life present that could die).

TomB: I think I’m beyond being able to entertain the idea that physical death and decay (which is just entropy, which as far as we know is necessary to the growth and progress of a temporal universe that changes and exchanges energy) were only introduced for the first time with human sin. Luckily the belief that human kind was created ‘mortal’ is not uncommon among the Fathers. Whew!

And I’m also unable to think of the pre-Fall state as the “end state” for which we were created. I get the idea that’s what you, Bob, are thinking, i.e., the pre-Fall garden is what we get BACK to when we’re glorified. I’d suggest that what we were in the garden—even if we were not mortal, we could become mortal (through sin)—was what we needed to be to mature and grow in grace towards the perfecting (the ‘telos’, ‘end’) of our natures. But those natures weren’t already fully developed. In other words, pre-Fall we weren’t all God intended us to be.

So putting together the both of these—that our pre-Fall natures were not the perfected, glorified things God intended they become, on the one hand, and that we truly did ‘lose’ something with sin’s corrupting influence (sin really is alien, a pure privation, something “in spite of which” God’s purposes for us are fulfilled)—I’d say that it’s not so much that we “fell from” as it was that we “fell out” (out of fellowship, relationship, etc.). Obviously human sin arrived and resulted in broken fellowship and a misrelating malfunctioning creation. But (contra Bob) that’s not to say that what we were before sin was the unimprovable perfection of our natures that we’ll someday get BACK to.

Bob: Yet in the scenario you [TomT] present, God actually knows we need to eat of the tree (against His explicit command) in order to arrive at the eventual maturity He hopes to achieve in us. Obviously, that notion makes me very uncomfortable.

TomB: Right. As far as I can tell, this is TomT’s view. Sin and evil make a positive contribution in the exposition of divine and created beauty. I can’t go there.

Bob: 2) Second, I’m curious to know what you think Paul means when he says (1 Cor 15: 51&2) we will be “changed” in the blink of an eye? I’ve always gotten the sense it was a change “back” to some sort of “pre-fall” state…

TomB: I think it’s better to view the eschaton (post-glorification) as the end-state “toward which” our pre-Fallen natures were designed to grow. So I don’t think Paul is taking us “back” to the garden. I think he brings the garden “to its fulfillment” in the eschaton.

Bob: However, if what’s happening right now, in this vail of tears, in our slow and painful growth toward insightful maturity and moral discrimination that would always intelligently chose God…

TomB: That’s what’s happening now, yes. So if this, then…

Bob: …why bother with, or celebrate, or desire, this abrupt change? (To say nothing of the frustration that if it was this easy, why not just “infuse” that change from the start?)

TomB: Because such ‘infusion’ is a metaphysically impossible ‘starting point’. TomT and I agree on that much. There are real metaphysical constraints placed upon God’s getting what he wants from contingent, finite, being. God can’t just—poof—start with the finished product. The product has to play its part in shaping itself toward fulfillment. But there IS fulfillment. The process does come to an end. The glorification of our fallen bodies (and ultimately the whole “groaning” creation) is that ‘change’. I’m not sure what you mean by “abrupt,” but it is a change. The final step in God’s redeeming embrace of the created order.

Bob: 3) Third, I’m most curious to know your view of the nature of the “reconciliation” that the Cross effects for the “things in heaven”. (Col 1:20) Seems to me reconciliation follows estrangement; but I don’t see the heavenly things as being in that state like we sinners are. If these “things” are created intelligent beings (eg angels?) then presumably they could only experience moral emergence to maturity via the very same egocentric (plus ambiguity and ignorance) pathways that birthed our first parents. Are they really in the same boat that we are?

TomB: I know you didn’t ask me, Bob, so I’m just thinking out loud so that TomT can comment on and correct me as well. I was reading John of Damascus (c. 676-749 AD, viewed by the Catholics as the “last of the Fathers”) last week. St. John isn’t known for his genius as an original thinking (like, say, Gregory of Nyssa). His genius was as an organizer and synthesizer of patristic thought. He’s actually a good place to start to get a distillation of Greek Patristic thought. So he’s taken quite seriously. Anyhow, I ran across a passage where he discusses angelic beings and just says (without even commenting, as if it was standard belief) that the angels were “created in the image of God.” There ya go. I was like, “What?”

Anyhow, I think we HAVE to lump angels and humans together at least as rational creatures who are held accountable for their choices by God. But that’s saying a lot, for they at least share in common the freedom required to self-dispose with respect to their purpose. But that purpose doesn’t have to be identical. Theirs can be more service-oriented and ours can be more personally intimate. But this makes sense of what we know and it allows us still to suppose that Christ’s ONE atoning act embraces both species of rational being (angelic and human) without having to say both are created for one and the same purpose, without distinction. They can be different and each have their own unique ‘telos’ and each be redeemed by Christ.

TomB

#43

Hi Tom B

Quick note from work…

So it seems we both agree that going “back” to Adams prefall (but if it wasn’t a fall, it can’t be prefall; what shall we call it then?) condition is not exactly so desirable perhaps. Nor, in all likelihood, is the “change” Paul spoke about (I just interchanged twinkling of an eye for “abrupt”; point being it is rather instantaneous) going back to Adams prefall (pre “event”) condition. Perhaps this change involves the revelation of the “trump card” that Tom T spoke about??

There is, however, a real danger though in postulating that Adam and Eve’s choice to eat of the tree, against advice/command was both inevitable and perhaps necessary; specifically, that act has been seen as “sin”. Well, if that choice was actually necessary to our first parents eventual moral development, whats the big deal about sin then? If sin merely means “to miss the mark”, again, what’s the big deal? Except that really runs couunter to Christian tradition which insists sin is a pretty big deal. (ie I don’t see any evidence of the attitude of “awe come on honey – give 'em a break; they’re only kids after all!”) (It would be incorrect to suggest that Tom T is being cavelier about sin, but if eating of the tree – that act which we say started this whole human sin mess – was inevitable, and even necessary for our eventual growth… well, that seems a dillema to me…)

Further, unless one is prepared to see death as a good and necessary and inevitable from the beginning, Adam’s reaping of this consequence must be seen as a negative thing. Whether fall from or fall out, it seems a real negative. So my sense is that you pretty much see this problem too.

As an aside on the notion of angels having a different purpose, not sure I can quite agree; seems to me that to be rational and intelligent and sentient IS to be relational. Like thats a kind of fundamental law of reality or something.
Lastly, the reason I think this conversation is so important is that if Tom T is right about all this (I think he is in significant ways) that goes a long way (in my mind anyway) to raching the conclusion of eventual Universal Reconciliation.

If God had no choice but to set things up in ways that allow for the messy process of slowly working and figuring our way out of the prevailing ignorance and ambiguity etc etc, then it simply does not follow that God will eventually get impatient that certain individuals seem to be taking longer to get it figured out and so condemns them to hell (ECT hell) or annihilation. Sort of just skim off the quick learners and abandon the rest. Rather, it seems blatantly obvious that this process, once instituted, must apply to ALL – with the very same results. Which is just what 1 Cor 15:22 seems to say…

Thanks Tom B

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#44

Bob: So it seems we both agree that going “back” to Adams prefall (but if it wasn’t a fall, it can’t be prefall; what shall we call it then?)…

TomB: Let’s call the “Fall” the “Great Detour.” So pre-Fall is pre-Detour, if you want. We were on the right path (not at that path’s final destination) and stepped off. We took an exit ramp off the road we should have stayed on en route to our ‘telos’. But we can still fulfill our ‘telos’ because we can, in Christ, re-enter the right path. And given UR, no road can take us so far afield that God’s grace cannot provide a re-entry ramp to life. But I don’t mind “Fall” personally.

Bob: Nor, in all likelihood, is the “change” Paul spoke about (I just interchanged twinkling of an eye for “abrupt”; point being it is rather instantaneous) going back to Adams prefall (pre “event”) condition. Perhaps this change involves the revelation of the “trump card” that Tom T spoke about?

TomB: I think the change in us that Paul calls the “transformation” of these earthly bodies is effected by the Parousia. When Christ is revealed in/to the cosmos, his presence (I think) will take care of the details.

Bob: There is, however, a real danger though in postulating that Adam and Eve’s choice to eat of the tree, against advice/command was both inevitable and perhaps necessary…

TomB: ‘Necessary’ would be a problem I think. But I think it’s plausible to say that for all intents and purposes sin’s eventual occurrence was ‘inevitable’. Given the risk entailed in libertarian freedom, an exploding population, and thousands of years to quantify over, the probability of sin’s NOT occurring is infinitesimally small, so much so that it would be irrational to bet against the odds. Kinda like tossing Scrabble letters from the Eifel Tower. It really is metaphysically possible that the letters will fall to the ground successfully and spell out the Lord’s prayer. I mean, it COULD happen (like a racquetball really CAN pass through the wall when you toss it, given quantum tunneling), but if I said of those letters as they fell, “Dude, they will inevitably NOT spell out the Lord’s prayer,” no one would say, “No no, can’t say it ‘won’t’ happen. After all it’s ‘possible’ you know.” At some point it becomes irrational to pay infinitesimally small probabilities any heed.

So was it possible that humankind stay on the road and successfully navigate all human history without sin erupting along the way at some point? Yeah, technically, sure. How probable? Not enough to make it rational to pay attention to. But none of this means God’s purposes for us ‘necessitate’ sin (which is where you and I differ from TomT I think).

Bob: (It would be incorrect to suggest that TomT is being cavelier about sin, but if eating of the tree – that act which we say started this whole human sin mess – was inevitable, and even necessary for our eventual growth… well, that seems a dillema to me…)

TomB: Right. You know, I think God knows the power of love and unfailing grace is SO infinite, and God’s atoning healing work SO powerful (perhaps Paul’s idea of “where sin abound, grace all the more abounded”), that no matter how bad it gets, God knows he’ll absorb (bad word maybe) or incorporate whatever evil comes, into the infinitely creative artistry of divine love. Know what I mean? Though sin is not technically necessary, I can imagine God thinking, “Yo, bring it ON! Throw whatever you got at me, at my work, at my project. I can take it all and STILL paint something no less beautiful and pleasing than had sin never occurred.” So God’s plans don’t need sin, but should sin arise, even it will be forced into service so to speak. All I mean is, God is able to bring good out of any evil, though it’s never the case that any beauty of divine goodness requires evil.

Bob: Further, unless one is prepared to see death as a good and necessary and inevitable from the beginning, Adam’s reaping of this consequence must be seen as a negative thing. Whether fall from or fall out, it seems a real negative. So my sense is that you pretty much see this problem too.

TomB: Right. And Paul speaks of “death” as an “enemy” to be “destroyed,” which sounds strange if the entropy that God established in the ‘good’ created order originally entailed our mortality. And in Hebrews 2.14 we have “Christ too shared their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil….” One way around this occurred to me some time ago. In the next verse, the author says “…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” See that? What’s that make you think? It made me wonder if, assuming we were mortal prior to the Great Detour, the problem with death isn’t mortality per se, but the effect of mortality upon the psyche and life of those who aren’t in right relationship with God. It’s our “fear of death” that’s dealt with. Ultimately mortality is also dealt with, but—and this is the key—this might have been the plan all along irrespective of sin’s complicating things. That is, we might have been created ‘mortal’ as part of the sort of context necessary to our learning to exercise freedom responsibly and to trust God, until such a time as when God decided we developed sufficiently and we’re ready to move on to immortality. Sin just turned mortality into a taskmaster, something that enslaved us to fear.

It’s speculative, but plausible I think. But underneath it all is the belief that what is ‘good’ (in this case mortality) can be ‘temporary’ by design. It doesn’t have to be intended for eternity just because it’s ‘good’ when God sets things up. But when we detour, what was a good part of a context necessary to our responsible becoming can become an “enemy” who enslaves us to “fear.”

Bob: As an aside on the notion of angels having a different purpose, not sure I can quite agree; seems to me that to be rational and intelligent and sentient IS to be relational. Like that’s a kind of fundamental law of reality or something.

TomB: Could be. I won’t say no. I’m just saying IF it turns out that angels are purposed for something a bit different than us (even within a general ‘relational’ framework), we can still say the redeeming work of Christ benefits them as well (not just humans).

Pax,
TomB

#45

Hi Tom B (and T of course)

Still wrestling with these ideas, and specifically that it really doesn’t accomplish much if salvation is simply returning to our originally created state. ie especially if an Irenaen interpretation is correct.

My question then is about the word/idea contained by the Greek word “Apocatastatsis”… Isn’t it true that the concept here IS of a return to an original state; a full restoration (implicitly back to some prior state)?? See NT texts such as Acts 3:21. And I’ve read that Origen, as well as Gregory of Nyssa used the term in this way. (Or, maybe, given the nature of the “Detour” there is no way this is even possible…??…) If restoration is part of what happens in “Salvation” what is being restored (which presumably was present pre-detour) or to what are we being restored (which also kind of presumes we had it previously.)

Also, if we see original Adam and Eve as having the moral awareness/maturity/knowledge of something like 2 year olds, how are we to understand Christ’s awkward insistence that we “become as little children”?? If it was childlike immaturity that lead to this whole saga in the first place, why on earth go back to that condition? What particular part of being childlike are we to go back to? If we say it’s something like a child’s ability to “simply trust” (ie “childlike trust”) are we not also saying that this trust is immature, has no real basis in knowledge and maturity, which means we’re right back where we started!

How do you see all this as fitting in TGB???

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#46

Bob: My question then is about the word/idea contained by the Greek word “Apocatastatsis”… Isn’t it true that the concept here IS of a return to an original state; a full restoration (implicitly back to some prior state)? See NT texts such as Acts 3:21. And I’ve read that Origen, as well as Gregory of Nyssa used the term in this way. (Or, maybe, given the nature of the “Detour” there is no way this is even possible…??…) If restoration is part of what happens in “Salvation” what is being restored (which presumably was present pre-detour) or to what are we being restored (which also kind of presumes we had it previously.)

TomB: To make sense of the language, sure, there has to be a sense in which salvation REstores us, REconciles us. G of Nyssa, however, is well-known for his forward-looking, eschatological view of salvation as the unending exploration into God’s infinity; we’ll be satiated and fulfilled in the present while always thirsting/longing for more of God. A “satisfying passion” for God, a “felt sense of dependency that IS our eternal rest.” Hey that sounds good! I should write it up! Ha. So there’s sense in which turning to God means coming “back” to a previous something (or someone) we knew. But if the fullness of what we were created for is ahead of us, then what we come back to, what we’re REstored to, is that ongoing fulfillment of our purpose. We’re restored to the main path from off our detour and can now REsume our journey.

Bob: Also, if we see original Adam and Eve as having the moral awareness/maturity/knowledge of something like 2 year olds, how are we to understand Christ’s awkward insistence that we “become as little children”? If it was childlike immaturity that lead to this whole saga in the first place, why on earth go back to that condition? What particular part of being childlike are we to go back to? If we say it’s something like a child’s ability to “simply trust” (ie “childlike trust”) are we not also saying that this trust is immature, has no real basis in knowledge and maturity, which means we’re right back where we started.

TomB: How do you think these things up? Ha!

Perhaps we ought to separate “childlike” from “immature.” To “trust” (like a child) isn’t an immature thing to do, really. That’s the right place to be. Maybe being “childish” is what we want to avoid.

I don’t know that Adam (or the stage of human development and emergence of self-consciousness that qualifies as now carrying the divine image) was equivalent to a 2 year old in terms of spiritual maturity. I don’t know what he was really. He was smart enough to tend the garden and administrate the classification of animal species—which, if somewhat metaphorical even, still suggests an intellectual capacity and assumption of responsibilities beyond that of a 2 year old.

I don’t think any of us really has a clue. Sometimes I get discouraged by thinking so long on this stuff without being able to settle upon firm convictions.

TomB

#47

Hello again, Bob and TomB:

Sorry for my delay in responding to this very interesting conversation. But here is a quick clarification concerning my own understanding of the first human sin. Bob wrote: “Yet in the scenario you present, God actually knows we need to eat of the tree (against His explicit command) in order to arrive at the eventual maturity He hopes to achieve in us. Obviously, that notion makes me very uncomfortable.” And TomB concurred: “Right. As far as I can tell, this is TomT’s view. Sin and evil make a positive contribution in the exposition of divine and created beauty. I can’t go there.”

Now I certainly would never claim that every sin is a logically necessary condition of some greater good. So if that is not my claim, what am I claiming? Just that, for all we know, sin is virtually an inevitable consequence of certain conditions essential to our emergence as rational agents who are capable of interacting with our environment on our own, so to speak. The suggestion here is that God had no choice, provided he wanted to create any rational agents at all, but to start them out in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and indeterminism, a context in which they would inevitably make faulty judgments and fall into error and sin. It does not follow, however–at least I don’t think it does–that error and sin are good in themselves or that every sin is a logically necessary condition of some greater good. Similarly, loving parents who judge it best to permit a child to play in a context where a few bumps and bruises are inevitable may not regard the bumps and bruises as good in themselves or even as individually necessary for some greater good.

Or consider a woman, living before the age of epidurals and modern anesthesia, who chooses to have children in the full knowledge that she cannot bear children without enduring the excruciating pain of childbirth. In this case, the pain of childbirth is indeed, for this woman at this particular time, a necessary condition of bearing a child. But it hardly follows that she regards the pain of childbirth as making “a positive contribution” to the joy of having children; and if an epidural had been available to her, perhaps she would have gladly made use of it, thereby achieving the joy of motherhood without enduring all of the pain in a natural childbirth. Similarly, God may know that he cannot create sons and daughters to love without having to deal with the consequences of starting them out in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and indeterminism–without having to deal, in other words, with the inevitability of their sin. But again, it hardly follows that he sees sin and death as things that make a valuable contribution to his creation rather than simply as enemies to be destroyed in the end.

Of course, Christians also believe that God brings good out of evil; some even hold that salvation from sin is such a towering good that this alone explains why God permits sin in the first place. But these points, however important they may be, are quite distinct from my hypothesis about creation, which is this: Even as the woman in the above example faced a choice between enduring the pain of childbirth and having no children at all, so God, I have suggested, faced a choice between dealing with the sins of created persons and creating no persons at all. You might reject that hypothesis, thinking that God could indeed have populated his creation with sinless persons. But that, I think, is where the issue must be joined.

Anyway, my thanks again to both of you for your contributions to this discussion.

-Tom

#48

Prof. Talbott,

That’s precisely what I understood you to be saying in “The Essential Role of Free Will in Universal Reconciliation,” and it’s always made perfect sense to me.

I thank you for clarifying your meaning here.

G-d Bless.

#49

TomT,

Thanks for clarifying things. I’m a bit confused, but in a good way! Your most recent post is precisely the sort of understanding of evil and its relationship to God’s purposes on behalf of which I view myself as having argued. God gets what God wants (in the end) “in spite of” evil/sin. That’s how I read your last point. The pain of childbirth is inevitable, but we bear it because it stands in between us and the joy we desire. It’s not “part” of the joy, doesn’t constitute the joy, or participate positively in shaping the joy. But this seems different from your earlier comments:

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=424&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

“Why not, in other words, allow the drama of human history to play itself out on its own and in a context where parents have the privilege of raising and caring for their children, where one person’s choices can have a direct bearing upon the temporary welfare of others, where real dangers and real threats to one’s temporary happiness exist to struggle against, and where one’s personal failures and sins give real meaning to repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and atonement? Imagine a world without any of this.”

Hopefully I can explain my confusion.

There’s a difference between saying God achieves his goals “because of” or “by means of” sin/evil and saying he achieves those ends “in spite of” sin/evil. Sin’s being “inevitable” is compatible with either view. But in the former sin contributes to determining the shape of beautiful outcomes; the good that God wants just is a story that is shaped by evil. If that ‘shape’ isn’t there, God doesn’t get what he wants. (I probably stink at explaining myself here.)

We were disagreeing over whether or not God has a “trump card” he can play by which he closes the epistemic gap and rules out our rejecting him or making evil choices. I thought such a trump card would destroy the very outcome God wants because that outcome (loving relationship) can only be achieved freely, thus the ‘risk’ of evil. I understood you to be saying that the reason God doesn’t play that trump card from the get-go is because the outcome he wants is people telling “stories” (of salvation, healing, rescue, etc.); such failures “give meaning” (as you describe it) to the outcomes God creates for. That’s what I mean by evil’s “making a positive contribution” or “shaping beautiful outcomes.” The end result isn’t possible without the evil in the sense that this result is achieved “by means of” evil. In my view, the end result may not be possible apart from sin’s inevitability, but it’s achieved “in spite of” evil.

But now I hear you saying something else, actually, quite the point I’m making, that the mother’s goal (having a child she loves) may only be gotten on the other side of some pain, but it’s “in spite of” this pain that she goes through with it. If she can take meds and dispose of the pain, she does so and still gets the child she wants. That would suggest that the pain isn’t necessary, or make a contribution, to the end result. This seems different than your earlier comment that God could play a trump card but that he doesn’t because that would preclude something God wants, namely, stories of healing and rescue.

Understand my confusion?

TomB

#50

Ah, now I see more clearly where I may have confused you, Tom, and thanks for another clearly written and excellent post.

There are, I think, two distinct questions to be distinguished here. The first concerns why God starts each of us out in a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and indeterminism, and here my proposed answer runs as follows: For all we know, these are metaphysically necessary conditions of our emergence as rational agents who are (a) aware of ourselves as distinct from our environment and (b) capable of acting on our own in it; hence, for all we know, God could not have created us in any other way. But the context of ambiguity, ignorance, and indeterminism in which we humans emerge as children virtually guarantees, I have also suggested, the kind of misjudgments that inevitably lead to error and sin. So, as I pointed out in my previous post, my answer to the first question carries no implication that God regards “sin and death as things that make a valuable contribution to his creation rather than simply as enemies to be destroyed in the end.” Or, to put it another way: My answer to the first question is quite consistent with the idea that, even as a woman (prior to the age of anesthesia) might choose to have a child in the full knowledge that she will have to endure the excruciating pain of childbirth, so God chooses to create us in the full knowledge that he will subsequently have to deal with our sin.

All of which leads to a second question: Why would God leave many of us (though not all of us) in a context of ambiguity and considerable ignorance for many years after we have already emerged as distinct rational beings and distinct centers of consciousness? For clearly, our epistemic distance from God, so essential to our emergence as self-aware and rational agents, is hardly essential, once we have come into being, to our continued existence as rational beings. Presumably God could, if he so chose, provide each of us at a fairly early age with a stunning revelation of a kind that would resolve all of the ambiguities, remove all of the ignorance, and shatter all of the illusions (and self deceptions) that make a rejection of him psychologically possible for a rational agent. Call that God’s trump card. So why does he not, a religious skeptic might ask, play such a trump card and play it earlier rather than later?

Now, according to many religious people, the general answer to this question can only be that God’s playing such a trump card would, for all we know, interfere with his achieving some important good or fulfilling some loving purpose in our lives. But what important good might be relevant here? One popular candidate is the good of human freedom, the idea being that God could not both play his trump card and maintain the epistemic distance required for us to love him freely. Over the years, as I have already indicated, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with this answer for reasons, both complicated and controversial, having to do with the nature of freedom itself. But why, I wonder, should the exact reason why God maintains his epistemic distance–whether it be to preserve human freedom, to fulfill a more complicated purpose than that, or even to fulfill some unknown purpose–why should this even matter in the present context? We both agree, I presume, that God maintains his epistemic distance in order to achieve some greater good than would otherwise be achievable; we also agree that sin and death are in no way good in themselves, that they are enemies to be defeated and destroyed in the end, and that the way in which they are destroyed is no less important than the mere fact of their destruction.

So does sin, you ask, contribute something of value, given my view, to creation as a whole? The answer probably requires some rather subtle (and difficult) distinctions, as you point out yourself. You thus write:

I think you have drawn an important distinction here. Applying a similar one to the woman who chooses to bear a child, you would no doubt say that she does so in spite of the pain, not because of it. But things get tricky, I think, when we consider certain theological contexts. Would you say that the Son of God entered this earthly realm, according to Christian theology, in spite of human sin or because of it?–that he suffered and died for us in spite of our sin or because of it? Or consider the concept of salvation from sin itself. Is not the reality and nature of sin precisely what makes salvation from sin such a great good, according to Christian theology? And does not the nature of sin help “to shape” this beautiful outcome, to use your own words, in a variety of complicated ways?

Chances are, Tom, that in posing such questions I have in effect misconstrued the distinction you have in mind. But here is what I am wondering: Whatever our disagreements may turn out to be concerning the nature of freedom, do we not basically agree that God maintains his epistemic distance in order that the drama of human history with all of its multi-faceted human relationships, undetermined choices, chance happenings, and even divine interventions might play out in its own way, so to speak?

Anyway, thanks again for your latest post.

-Tom Talbott

#51

Hi TomT,

I am way far behind in this thread.:slight_smile:

We agree that rational agents sometimes resist God’s grace for a season. But we have some differences in biblical interpretation such as John 1:12-13.

I’ll begin with theory before I do some biblical interpretation. I suppose one way to state my view is that somebody hypothetically could continue to resist God’s grace literally forever while nobody practically will resist God’s grace literally forever. I like using the analogy of a fair coin toss. Hypothetically, an unlimited number of fair coin tosses with heads on one side and tails on the other side could always result in heads. For example, ten fair coin tosses resulting in ten heads has odds of one in a thousand; twenty fair coin tosses resulting in twenty heads has odds of one in a million; thirty fair coin tosses resulting in thirty heads has odds of one in a billion, and ad infinitum. There’s a chance of always getting heads despite the odds eventually becoming practically zero. Likewise, there’s no essential chance of endlessly flipping heads in an unlimited series of fair coin tosses.

In regards to eternity future, there’s always unlimited time regardless of how much time has already elapsed. And God will never stop to occasionally offer salvation. And I assume that nobody will literally reject endless offers of salvation from God. Likewise, anybody hypothetically can reject endless offers of salvation while nobody practically will reject endless offers of salvation.

Now I want to look at John 1:12-13 in NASB:

[12] But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
[13] who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Verse 12 talks about the human free will part of receiving the gift of relationship with God while verse 13 emphasizes that humans cannot in anyway in themselves generate this relationship with God. The context of God’s gift of salvation to humanity is clearly in the context of a conditional covenant, not an unconditional covenant such as an ancient land grant covenant. I also don’t see how you can interpret inevitable salvation from these verses. Perhaps inevitable salvation for everybody is taught elsewhere in the Bible, but not here.

Anyway, I wish to ask you a clarifying question about your belief that rational agents can temporarily resist God’s gracious love. Does this ability to temporarily resist God’s gracious love include the possibility of genuine apostasy? I ask because many Calvinists claim that there is no such thing as genuine apostasy. They believe that a genuine believer can never reject God’s gift of salvation while all of the biblical teachings about apostasy are hypothetical situations that cannot happen under any circumstances. In the case of being a Universalist, then we would believe that apostasy would last only temporarily. And this question also relates to this topic about the origin of sin. (I’m not an expert on Augustine, but I suppose he believed that a baptized believer could commit mortal sin and go to hell.)

#52

Hi TomT,

I want to tell you some more of what was on my mind while above I asked if you believe that some rational agents can temporarily decide to become apostate. For example, it’s my belief that some heavenly host never rebelled against God while other heavenly host such as the devil has rebelled against God, which is a common belief in Christian orthodoxy. And you said something along the lines that perhaps all created rational agents would eventually rebel against God. (Sorry if my summary of your statements is slightly off and please clarify anything you believe about this.) So I’m wondering if your view contradicts the common view that God’s angels have never rebelled.

Also, perhaps humans were designed in a way that their rebellion was inevitable while I also believe along with Christian orthodoxy that Genesis 1-3 and various biblical references to Genesis 1-3 teach that the first humans had an initial period of time of living in close relationship with God before a human rebellion occurred that resulted in the fallenness of humanity, regardless of the literalness or non-literalness of Genesis 1-3.

I also want to comment on Aug’s question about eternal life. Jesus in John 17:3 defines eternal life as knowing God, which I believe was the initial state of all heavenly host and the first humans. I think you suggest something else but I’m not one hundred percent sure. And I doubt that you could convince me otherwise while I would love to dialog with you on this whatever you believe about these concepts.

#53

Strangely, as I read through this 3rd page of posts, I increasingly got the feeling of the Garden and the expulsion from it as a metaphor for the birth process itself. The garden being the womb in which everything is provided and safe but no opportunity for self realisation and the expulsion as being expelled into the world kicking and screaming and having to get on with things.

#54

TomT,

Thanks for the reply. It’s a privilege. Your last post helped clarify things more.

I’m still just thinking out loud here, OK? I’m in process on a lot of this.

TomT: I think you have drawn an important distinction here. Applying a similar one to the woman who chooses to bear a child, you would no doubt say that she does so in spite of the pain, not because of it. But things get tricky, I think, when we consider certain theological contexts. Would you say that the Son of God entered this earthly realm, according to Christian theology, in spite of human sin or because of it?

TomB: I’ll want to be careful here. Cliffs on both sides! Ha.

I think Creation & Incarnation go together. Creation entailed incarnation as its central, defining event and the means by which created being could be brought into union with God. I like the Eastern Orthodox on this. But ‘sin’ and ‘evil’ aren’t entailed the same way. Evil isn’t intended by God nor does the unity between divine and created being that God creates us for require that created being first become corrupt and privated by sin “so that” it can be what it was created to be (that WOULD constitute the objectionable sort of “because of” I’m talking about). So I separate incarnation from redemption in this sense—incarnation was always an intended aspect of creation, indeed the ‘key’ to creation. But none of that stands upon ‘evil’ occurring as a kind of necessary means to get there.

Once sin and evil enter the picture, then, the incarnation takes on the added task of rescuing humanity. But that’s not (and shouldn’t be) the only framework within which we exposit the incarnation. So the path to unity with God is complicated by the need to redeem humankind. So yes, Christ dies for us “because of sin” (because sin stands in between a fallen humanity and a fulfilled humanity), but the end result (union with God) is achieved “in spite of” this detour; thus, “God achieves his creational goals in spite of having to die on our behalf because of sin…. ” I took your “because of sin” to qualify ultimate goals, thus “God achieves his creational goals because of sin,” in the sense that the ultimate goal is unachievable apart from sin/evil.

For example, we achieve a particular intimacy of relationship (say, in marriage) “in spite of” obstacles just in case the intimacy would obtain had the obstacles never occurred. Marriages that never suffer infidelity aren’t on that account less intimate than those who have weathered an infidelity. But if infidelities occur, then it becomes the case that “because of the infidelity” we have to take certain measures. So only in a proximate sense we end up having achieved personal intimacy “because of” the infidelity, not in the ultimate sense that there is no such intimacy for those who DON’T go the infidelity route. See what I’m saying? I understand you to have been arguing this latter sense of “because of,” i.e., a marriage can’t become an experience and exchange of personal intimacy UNLESS it suffers and weathers some infidelity, some deep betrayal.

[Note: But I also know that marriages that do weather storms experience their intimacy in the context of which it was achieved, so that the pain of the past occasions a continual thankfulness and gratefulness. I don’t want to exclude this. I just don’t want to say intimacy isn’t even imaginable apart from it.]

TomT: Or consider the concept of salvation from sin itself. Is not the reality and nature of sin precisely what makes salvation from sin such a great good, according to Christian theology?

TomB: This would be to view things from inside of the eventuality of what is unintended (sin). If we fast forward from creation to the emergence of sin and redemption, then yes, there’s beauty. Redemption is a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing for love to sacrifice and suffer for the lost. This just constitutes the “in spite of” aspect of love’s infinite ability to achieve its end (union with God) no matter what gets in its way. But to say sin has to get in love’s way before love can achieve its end, “so that” love can achieve its end, is a different claim.

TomT: But here is what I am wondering: Whatever our disagreements may turn out to be concerning the nature of freedom, do we not basically agree that God maintains his epistemic distance in order that the drama of human history with all of its multi-faceted human relationships, undetermined choices, chance happenings, and even divine interventions might play out in its own way, so to speak?

TomB: Certainly so, yes. I think we just differ a bit in how we understand that ‘playing out’ relevant to God’s ultimate ends for humans. I think the freedom we’re given is the metaphysical pre-requisite for our responsibly growing into intimacy with God. When we achieve God’s purposes for us, our having been ‘free’ will be a true “because of” mechanism, a non-disposable piece of the puzzle. But not so for you I think, right? You’ll want to say end-states where human beings enjoy intimacy with God which do NOT have sin and evil in their background are less beautiful than end-states where the ravages of sin and evil are part of the story.

For you:

(1) Creation —> Fall —> Redemption —> Trust/Growth —> Union/Intimacy with God

…is a more beautiful, aesthetically pleasing total state of affairs than…

(2) Creation —> Trust/Growth —> Union/Intimacy with God.

To say sin ‘shapes’ the outcome (to me) is to say that union/intimacy with God can only ultimately be had in its fullness by human beings via redemption from sin, i.e., the only human nature that can get into full intimacy with God is ‘sinful’ human nature. But Jesus was a human being who knew intimacy with God in its fullness (learned obedience through what he suffered too—all very interesting!) via (2), not (1). Shouldn’t Jesus’ humanity be as much a display of God’s original intentions for our natures even if he ends up dying to save us?

One last thought (perhaps unintelligible):

There’s a “because of” on the other side of “in spite of” (which I’m talking).
and then
There’s a “because of” on the other side of “so that” (which I think you’re talking about).

Blessings and peace on you and your family Tom. Thanks for putting up with my rantings!

TomB

#55

In other words, the ‘incarnation’ has stuff to do other than just occasion the death of Jesus for us sinners.

Tom

#56

Thanks for your latest two posts, Jim, which I found to be extremely interesting. You might be disappointed, however, that with one minor exception I found nothing in them, or at least nothing substantial, with which to disagree (hee, hee). We certainly agree that rational agents can resist God’s grace for a season, and beyond that, we also agree that it is a practical impossibility for any rational agent to resist that grace forever. Your fair coin analogy makes the point exceedingly well, I think. And, by the way, because Eric Reitan (in the philosophy department at Oklahoma State University) makes use of this same analogy, you might find some of his work worthwhile. A good place to begin would be the chapter entitled “Human Freedom and the Impossibility of Eternal Damnation” in Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge (eds.), Universal Salvation? The Current Debate (see especially pp. 136-141). In my entry on universalism in Jerry Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Eschatology, I in effect summarize his argument as follows:

Nor do I have any disagreement–contrary to your own expectation, perhaps–with your interpretation of John 1:12-13. I have never appealed to this text, for example, in support of the claim that the salvation of all sinners is inevitable. I might interpret I Corinthians 15:21-26 that way, but not John 1:12-13.

You have also made an excellent point, I think, about apostasy. For you are right: According to standard Calvinist theology, it is impossible for someone with a saving knowledge of God ever to fall away or to lose his or her salvation; and yet the Canons of Dort explicitly state that Adam had a saving knowledge of God. So if Adam did fall away from this saving knowledge of God, he would be a counterexample to the standard Calvinist claim that this is impossible.

And finally, my understanding of the first human sin is quite consistent, so far as I can tell, with the following idea: Even as a typical child already has a relationship with its parents prior to its earliest moral choices, so our first parents already had a relationship with God prior to any conscious act of rebellion. But my understanding is clearly inconsistent with the idea that Adam and Eve started out with a perfect (or even a saving) knowledge of God. For so far as I can tell, no motive for rebellion (and therefore no act of rebellion) is so much as psychologically possible outside a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misjudgment, and that is no less true of angels, I would add, than it is of human beings. So if in accordance with traditional Christian mythology there really was an angelic rebellion in heaven, then it follows, I believe, that the rebellious angels had an imperfect knowledge of God’s essential nature. If you disagree with that—and I’m not saying you do—then this would be the only exception to my initially expressed thought that we have nothing about which to disagree in your latest two posts.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

-Tom

Ante/PostMortem Repentance
#57

TomT, thank you for replying. I want to clarify that I have no disappointment with little disagreement :smiley: I honestly was unsure where you were coming from while I desired some clarification that I could understand within my system of thinking.

#58

Actually, I like that picture a lot, Jeff. Thanks.

-Tom

#59

Wow, Tom, you really outdid yourself in your latest post, which is filled with juicy ideas. Here is a sample of what I find altogether intriguing:

Not only do I agree that “Creation & Incarnation go together”; I’m inclined to think that creation is impossible apart from Incarnation. As St Paul put it, “in him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth … all things were created through him and for him.” So I too like the Eastern Orthodox emphasis here. (Incidentally, two of my sisters, my daughter, and all of their immediate families are members of an Eastern Orthodox Church.)

But I do need to clarify one point about my own view, which you describe as follows:

The problem with this picture, from my perspective, is that I no longer believe in a Fall. I do not believe, in other words, that Adam fell from a higher state to a lower one. Nor does anything in the Genesis account of creation entail, so far as I can tell, that Adam and Eve were any less likely than any other child, given the context in which they first emerged, to act in self-centered, sinful, and disobedient ways. So I would have to delete “Creation —> Fall” from (1) and replace it with something about conditions metaphysically necessary for our existence and our emergence in them. After that, I’m unsure how the contrast you have in mind might proceed.

In any event, I reject, no less than you do, the idea that God is the cause of sin, as you know; I thus see sin and error as obstacles that God must overcome in the process whereby he creates additional Sons and Daughters to love. So let’s step back for a moment and return to that point of agreement in an effort to discover where, if any, a point of disagreement may begin to emerge. According to traditional Protestant theology, all the descendants of Adam, with the one exception of Jesus Christ, are already sinners, already “dead” in their “trespasses and sins,” from the very beginning of their moral consciousness (see Ephesians 2:1). With the one exception of Jesus Christ, in other words, there are no sinless human beings. Do you accept that traditional doctrine, as I presume you do? If not, then I would be most interested in where (and how) you might depart from it; and if you do accept it, as I presume you do, then I am wondering how you would explain this near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin. If God is not the cause of sin, then why does it inevitably turn out that we are all sinners? Why are there no sinless people walking around? The Augustinians would explain this by appealing to an inherited sinful nature that removes our freedom not to sin. But could you perhaps explain how you understand this matter?

Thanks again for your many contributions to this thread.

-Tom

#60

Don’t worry, Jim. I never seriously thought that you wanted a disagreement. Nor did I have any doubt that you were honestly seeking clarification. So thanks again for your query.

-Tom