The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Open Theism and the Origin of Sin

Featured Writers Dr Thomas Talbott
#61

TomT-

It seems we’re ending up having more in common. Incarnation from the get-go! Love it. We might be kindred spirits after all. ;o)

I get what you mean by saying you no longer believe in a Fall (“falling from a higher state to a lower one”). And I want to agree that Adam wasn’t existing in some perfect state of bliss prior to sinning. But still it seems to me that if we’re going to agree that God doesn’t cause sin/evil and that he ultimately “overcomes” it, that humanity’s becoming evil is at least a kind of “detour” or “setback,” whatever we need to call it to describe something’s having occurred which now needs to be OVERcome, otherwise, what’s “overcome” really mean? It would seem things are just going according to plan and there’s really nothing to overcome, unless the so-called overcoming of sin IS the plan, which seems to be at the heart of our disagreement. Is ‘sin’ part of ‘the plan’? Maybe the answer is a sense in which it is and a sense in which it isn’t.

TomT: I thus see sin and error as obstacles that God must overcome in the process whereby he creates additional Sons and Daughters to love.

TomB: I like the sound of that!

TomT: 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?

TomB: Yeah, I accept that Jesus is the only sinless human.

TomT: 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.

TomB: Explain it all? I’ll try. Yeah, um, one second, eh, lemme grab my notes here, um. I had those answers written down somewhere. Let’s see now. Well eh… :unamused:

But let me quickly say that if you take the Augustinian route, then you are saying there’s a fundamental difference of ‘nature’ between Adam/Eve prior to their choosing evil and all other human beings who are born with an inherited sin nature and you’re accounting for the universality of sin on the basis of the latter. But you’ve already argued that you’re sure Adam was “as likely” to sin as we are. So why do we need an inherited sin nature? (Or aren’t you asking about this because it’s your view?) If Adam (or anyone else in his position) was as likely to sin as we Augustinianly stained sinners are likely to sin, then all we need is “finiteness” and “epistemic distance” to account for sin’s universality. So, bye-bye Augustine.

Having said that, I think we do start out with several strikes against us, in a ‘less than optimal’ context. I think the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context’ where all the contributing factors and influences (internal and external) are arranged for optimal success. And we don’t have THAT now. We’re now born into a context wherein all the contributing factors are less than optimal. But as far as our ‘natures’ are concerned, why can’t we just be what Adam was ‘naturally’? Well, the answer to that is usually, “So you think human beings can make it to heaven on their own, without God? You think we don’t need Jesus? You Pelagian!” We want to make sure nobody makes it through life successfully and messes up our atonement theories, so we make ‘em all sinners from the womb. I’m less and less convinced by this, i.e., that it’s needed or helpful.

What I’d like to say is that being dependent upon grace just IS OUR NATURE. We don’t come to need grace and help only AFTER we’re sinners. So nobody gets to heaven without needing God and embracing the grace of God whether or not they’ve actually sinned. This was in fact the case even of the “pre-Fall” Adam and would have continued to be the case of all subsequent generations supposing there was no eventuation of sin. And the embodiment of that grace was always to be the Incarnate Son, the object of our trust and faith, again, even in an imagined state of our never having sinned. Pelagius got a bad rap in some ways I think.

We get socialized and end up individuating with respect to our surroundings. It can’t be otherwise. So it’s bound to go awry if those surroundings are fallen and broken, even more so than when those surroundings aren’t bent or broken (assuming they weren’t in the Garden prior to sinful choices). Isn’t that enough? Do we need to implicate human ‘nature’ in the womb? Again, I think the Eastern Orthodox have the better share of the truth on this.

And let’s remember too the ‘ecstatic’ or irreducibly ‘social’ character of individual personal becoming. Personhood is what we’re designed for, and personhood is a creative, intersubjective achievement. God intended the necessary truth about him and us be mediated through human community. There is no other way to grow ‘persons’ out of finite rational creatures. We learn it from our parents and families. No one of us was meant to come into the fullness of the persons God created us to be apart from others playing their part. We tend to ‘individualize’ this whole issue far too much. But if we recognize the communal/social aspects of individual personhood, then that will (as it does for me) tip the scales in favor of ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ being the real culprit in universal sinfulness.

Lastly, consider our basic instinct to survive, to secure our own well-being. We’re pain averse and pleasure seeking. Nothing fallen or sinful about that per se. This just is the stuff of finite creatureliness, the context in which responsible self-determination and character development has to take place. Now if our identities get socialized and individualized within sinful contexts like today (i.e., where all the social structures and relations that are the “givens” in which children end up defining themselves are fallen/broken), then that pretty much guarantees the universality of sin. We don’t need an inherited sinful nature to know human beings will all eventually screw up.

TomB

#62

Good thoughts, all. I’ve read through this last page with a good deal of interest. I’m wondering if perhaps the question of the ‘necessity’ of sin/ evil isn’t partly a matter of perspective. Is sin/ evil in some sense necessary to experience, say, salvation and redemption from our perspective, while at the same time we could say that it may not have been a necessary ingredient to our development (theoretically, at least) from God’s perspective?
What came to mind for me was the passage in Isaiah where God explicitly states that he creates evil (Heb.: Ra). One would assume I suppose, that if that is true in the sense that I think it is, that He would have some necessary purpose in doing so?

I have heard it suggested before that if we had no experience of sin or evil, then we would have absolutely no framework with which to reference the goodness of God in all the forms that takes. In other words, we would have no frame of reference or appreciation for what light is, without the knowledge of darkness. Not that darkness is an independent thing; it is a function of the presence of light (which is necessary for shadow to exist, for example). So perhaps in some sense we could say that sin and evil are necessary to God’s ultimate purposes with respect to something along these lines?

#63

Melch

I have seen commentary on that passage that suggests that the word translated ‘evil’ might be better translated ‘calamity’ so that it refers to misfortune rather than premeditated bad perpetrated by one human on another. Of course that is just off the top of my (admittedly thinning) head with no references for you to follow-up.

#64

Hi, Jeff.
Yes, I’ve heard/ read that argument as well. The word there translated as “evil” is the Hebrew word “Ra”, IIRC. The most common meaning of this word is bad or evil. One could certainly make a contextual case for the different translation, as calamity is also in the list of possible definitions for that word, but is down the list a bit. Partly because of other supporting passages that I can’t seem to recall at the moment, I’ve personally found the argument for the “calamity” translation there somewhat unconvincing.

#65

Well, Tom, after reading your latest post in this thread–which was fun to read, by the way–I’m still wondering where in the he … oops, where in the world a fundamental disagreement lies between us. But perhaps the above quotation will lead us to a minor disagreement of some kind or another.

I certainly agree that we “start out with several strikes against us”–perhaps even three of them! But if, as you suggest, “the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context,’” how, exactly, are we to cash that out? Would you do so in terms of the likelihood of someone succumbing to temptation and sinning? According to Augustine, Adam was free to sin and free not to sin, but his descendants were no longer free not to sin. So would you at least want to say something like this: Given the “optimal context” in which he emerged, Adam had a better chance at a sinless life than the rest of us do? For my own part, I see nothing in the Genesis account that would lead me to that conclusion. For nothing there suggests to me that Adam saw things any more clearly than a typical toddler does, or that he had a better understanding of the nature of evil and its destructive consequences than we do, or that his temptation to disobey was any weaker than that of other children.

Or consider this. According to the story in Genesis, Adam had to contend with the wiles of the serpent or, as most would have it, the devil himself–hardly a good influence. Does it not seem as if the crafty serpent, with all of its subtlety, might have had a more profound influence upon Adam and Eve than even a dysfunctional family might have on a child? As for a set of loving parents, I know that my own parents protected me from a host of bad influences and would have kept me as far away from the serpent as they could! I also strongly suspect that, for Adam no less than for the rest of us, a context of great physical comfort with an absence of physical challenges would tend to make sin and error more likely rather than less likely.

According to St. Paul, moreover, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust”; Paul then went on to write: “As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust (I Cor. 15:47-48). To me, at least, this suggests that, according to Paul, Adam came into being with the same dispositions and moral propensities and with the same moral weaknesses as any other child. We are all (including Adam, Eve, and all of their merely human descendants) of the dust; that is, we all emerge and begin making choices in the same context of moral ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion. So does this lead us to a possible area of disagreement?

One final point. I previously wrote: “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?” What I was getting at here was the issue of freewill. If we are genuinely free not to sin (in part because God is not the cause of our sinning), then why is it that, according to Christian theology, we are already dead in trespasses and sin from the very beginning of our moral consciousness? Believe me, I do not raise this question in an effort to trip you up. For the question poses just as great a difficulty for me as it does for anyone else.

Anyway, thanks for your latest contribution.

-Tom

#66

Dr. Tom-

I remember back in 2000 Greg Boyd started a discussion website about open theism (and other things). What I thought was so fantastic was that somebody as busy and obviously important as that would take time to make himself available to average Joes like me. I have that same great feeling about how gracious you’ve been to make yourself available this like. Thanks again.

DrT: But if, as you suggest, “the Garden represents a kind of ‘optimal context,’” how, exactly, are we to cash that out? Would you do so in terms of the likelihood of someone succumbing to temptation and sinning?

Tom: I suppose I don’t mean much more than that God doesn’t trash the place first and then hand it over to Adam. He really does give something wonderful and blessed to us—to work with and make something of. There wasn’t a corrupt society waiting to receive them and pervert them at first chance. I guess I’m more interested in emphasizing the ‘goodness’ of creation and the love behind God’s motivation and intentions. That’s a constant, yes. Still the case for every new life that arrives. But the world into which we’re today born is SO jacked up.

But I don’t suppose that really matters if, as you and I agree, sin was virtually inevitable. And as you say, there may be little difference between an Adam in an optimal context but who is personally targeted by Satan but has no fallen context to deal with and somebody born today in a fallen context who is not so targeted but who’s targeting systemic evil. When you crunch the numbers, there’s no real difference.

DrT: To me, at least, this suggests that, according to Paul, Adam came into being with the same dispositions and moral propensities and with the same moral weaknesses as any other child. We are all (including Adam, Eve, and all of their merely human descendants) of the dust; that is, we all emerge and begin making choices in the same context of moral ambiguity, ignorance, and illusion. So does this lead us to a possible area of disagreement?

Tom: Perhaps not. But I’d like to try to say that it’s not Adam who had the same propensities and dispositions as we do, but we who have the same propensities and dispositions as he did. I’d like to keep that arrangement if I could. He came first and we follow. We conform (or not) to his example.

DrT: One final point. I previously wrote: “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?” What I was getting at here was the issue of freewill. If we are genuinely free not to sin (in part because God is not the cause of our sinning), then why is it that, according to Christian theology, we are already dead in trespasses and sin from the very beginning of our moral consciousness?

Tom: I don’t think we are already spiritually dead in sin from the beginning of our moral consciousness, unless you mean to say that once we’re able to make moral judgments we very quickly thereafter commit sin. Sin presupposes the capacity to make moral judgments, so that capacity can’t itself be sinful, nor can sin be co-terminous with the coming to be of moral consciousness itself. We may universally screw up upon becoming morally conscious, but surely the two are distinct.

Perhaps through time the two balance out: Where human population is extremely small and societal-systemic sinfulness minimal, Satan can focus his personal efforts on the few, as you say. So we have little chance of making it through successfully. With an exploding population, what tends to guarantee universal sinfulness is the societal-systemic influence as that rises and becomes more pervasive as Satan and his minions have fewer resources to personally (as it were) go around offering fruit to every individual. At first Satan’s going door to door so to speak. But once he ruins enough homes, perverted people pass on the sickness without help from anybody.

But either way it’s ‘nurture’. With the Eastern Orthodox, I’d like to affirm the basic goodness of the nature we’re ‘given’ by God. What I mean is, I don’t want to ‘fault’ what God gives us ‘naturally’ speaking. Even if the epistemic distance and freedom necessary to personal becoming makes sin virtually inevitable; it’s also what makes our loving God and others possible.

I do believe though that there are a great many individuals who through the exercise of virtue have become free from sin in this life, having solidified sufficiently in grace. I think this happens far more than we think. There’s no reason to assume that we cannot and do not in fact become thus perfected in this life. Mother Teresa comes to mind. I’m not in a position to say she in fact was living free from actual sin, but I can easily imagine it.

TomT

#67

Tom, again, thank you for your reply. I want to clarify that I believe that all created beings always had and always will have “an imperfect knowledge of God’s essential nature” because only an omniscient agent could have a perfect knowledge of God. Likewise, by my definition of perfect knowledge, I don’t believe the first humans ever had a perfect knowledge of God. And I also believe that the first believers did not initially need saving so I also believe that there was no “saving knowledge” at the origin of humanity. And as a believer in theistic evolution, I believe that the first humans were conceived in the womb of pithecanthropines while I know nothing about the dynamics of the human spirit and faith in the womb. However, I believe God manifested in an theophany and revealed himself and his covenant of grace to the first humans. And the first humans initially accepted God’s covenant of grace, but eventually rejected the covenant, not that I believe in a literal Tree of the Personal Knowledge of Good and Evil.

#68

For years I have believed that it is impossible for anyone, even God who is omniscient, to know the unknowable. I didn’t realize until relatively recently that I was an “open theist” all of those years.

Open Theists believe in the Omniscience of God

It is commonly assumed among those who do not understand Open Theism, that its proponents do not believe in God’s omniscience. This is a mistake assumption. Open theists, like nearly all other Christians do believe in the omniscience of God.

Disagreement with Calvinists, Arminians, and Molinists does not concern the scope of God’s knowledge, but rather the content of reality. Most or all open theists, including myself, do not believe that sentences about future freely-chosen actions have present truth value. Rather sentences about future freely-chosen actions either express intention or prediction. For example, if I say, “I will go to the city tomorrow” I am not making a statement which is either true or false; I am expressing my intention to go to the city tomorrow. If I say, “In the next Canadian election, the Conservatives will win with a majority”, I am not making a statement which is either true or false. I am making a prediction.

In formal logic, all statements do have truth value, and the law of the excluded middle requires all statements to be either true or false. If we accept this description of statements, then open theists must exclude sentences about future freely-chosen acts from the category of “statements”. Perhaps they can be better classified as “meta-statements.”

It seems obvious that if meta-statements about future actions of a person have truth value now, then the person does not have free will. For example, if it is now true that Joe will raise his hand tomorrow morning, then Joe cannot refrain from raising his hand tomorrow morning. For, if he refrains from raising his hand tomorrow morning then it is not now true that he will raise his hand tomorrow morning. Similarly, if it is now false that Joe will raise his hand tomorrow morning, then he cannot raise his hand at that time. Thus, in either case, there is something Joe cannot do, and so he not have the freedom to choose. Thus there is a logical contradiction between sentences about future actions of people having present truth value, and freedom of choice. This argument logically extends to all other meta-statements about future actions of people, for other meta-statements are not of a different order, and thus cannot be excluded.

For one to know that a statement is true, it is a necessary condition that the statement is, in fact, true. For example, I may claim that I know that my wife is now at home. However, if you prove to me that she is not at home, then I will no longer claim that I know that she is at home. I can only say that I thought I knew. Similarly, If one knows that a statement is false, then the statement is, necessarily, false. No one can know the truth value of a “statement” which is neither true nor false (hereafter called “meta-statement”. Meta-statements have no truth value. So there is nothing to know!

The statement that my wife is now at home does have a truth value. It is either true or false. Thus it is possible to know that my wife is at home ---- or that she is not at home. However, the meta-statement that my wife will use the internet tomorrow does not have a truth value. It is not actually a statement about what will absolutely occur. It is a prediction. It may be a very good prediction (based on her past actions, or knowing her character). But my wife may not use the internet tomorrow. She may choose to do something else instead. Whether or not my wife will use the internet tomorrow cannot be known.

Other “statements” about freely-chosen future actions may express intentions. I may say, “I am going to town tomorrow.” This meta-statement will become a statement with truth value when I have made my choice.

When God makes statements about future actions of people, He is not making an absolute statement about what necessarily must occur. Rather He is making a prediction of what will probably occur. His prediction is based on all the information He possesses concerning the people involved and the related circumstances (and that is exhaustive information). Thus God’s predictions are much more likely to come true than predictions made by anyone else. For everyone else’s knowledge of the people involved and the related circumstances is limited. However, regardless of whether the relevant knowledge is exhaustive or limited, the people about whom the prediction is made may choose to do otherwise, and so the prediction will not be actualized. Here is one record in which God thought something would happen, and the opposite occurred.

"I thought, ‘After she [Israel] has done all these things she will return to Me’; but she did not return … Jeremiah 3:10 NASB

I know the King James and related versions (Douay, JB2000, KJ21, NKJV, RWebster) translate “Return to me” as if it were a command, but the imperative mode is used neither in the Hebrew nor in the Septuagint.

Other translations have either “I thought (or “said”) ‘… she will return to me’…” or “I thought (or “said”) ‘…she would return to me’…” These translations include ASV, Darby, ESV, JPS (Jewish Publication Society), NASB, NIV, RSV, NRSV. However, whether God thought it or said it, it didn’t happen. It’s not that God was “wrong”. Doubtless He made the best prediction possible, based on His exhaustive knowledge of the situation. But the free will choices of the Hebrews resulted in an outcome different from that which God had predicted.

It would seem that I am what may be called an “ultra open theist”. Personally, I see the denotation of “meta-statement” as extending to all statements about future events, not merely those about freely-chosen future actions, the reason being that free agents may intervene in events, or God may intervene or God may change His mind. Even astronomical events which seem to be totally predictable and inevitable, may not occur if God should intervene, or if man should intervene (by way of gigantic nuclear explosions, for example).

However, God makes some statements about His future intentions about which He states that He will not change His mind. Such statements, and only such statements, would seem to be exceptions to my suggestion that all statements about future events are really “meta-statements” with no truth value.

To affirm that God knows the logically unknowable, that is, that He knows the truth value of meta-statements which have no truth value, is inherently self-contradictory. Thus, saying that God does not know people’s future choices no more sets limits on God’s omniscience than to affirm that God cannot create a stone so large that He can’t lift it, sets limits on His omnipotence.

However, God does know everyone’s present intentions, and those intentions are likely to lead to future actions which God often predicts.

#69

Hi Paidion!

Is this a piece you wrote on open theism previously, P? Or just this particular post?

Tom

#70

Hi Paidion!

Nice to read your post.

It’s really hard to quantify the opinions of open theists regarding their semantics (whether they embrace bivalence, excluded middle, etc.). Many DO reject these as you say. But my hunch is that most do not. Most adopt the position that bivalence holds universally (as well as excluded middle), but that the scope of propositions describing the future be extended from ‘will’ and ‘will not’ (both of which are false just in case the event described is ‘open’) to include ‘might and might not’. (Check out Alan Rhoda’s papers online, especially this one: alanrhoda.net/papers/opentheism.pdf).

Blessings,
Tom

#71

Greetings Tom,
I am not sure why you are asking, but if it helps you in some way, then I affirm that it is indeed a “piece” which I wrote several years ago.

#72

I just asked because if it was a portion of something online I’d like to collect the rest of it!

;o)