A.Suarez's Treatment on a Pope's Formulation for Original Sin's Transmission!

Faith & Science Conversation
1124

Antoine, I have profited from your ongoing discussions with @GJDS and @MOls, because they illustrate how, even though two parties are in basic agreement with certain key words, they can still differ significantly in how thy should be put into action. The word, Pride, seems universally accepted as the basic nature of Original Sin. You have expressed it this way:

Perhaps the author of this passage in Genesis was truly inspired in using the word(s) like Pride to convey this information to future generations (and subsequent translations were equally faithful conveying God’s thoughts), but can we be so positive that the English word, Pride, CANNOT be misleading? IMHO, the important message to be taken from Genesis is that humankind fulfills God’s purpose when each of us strives to become an Image of our Creator, who is the epitome of love, empathy, and interpersonal relationships. You express these ideas in ways I find convincing:

[quote=“AntoineSuarez, post:1122, topic:35442”]
So a first point that allow us to better understanding what “Original Sin” is all about may be this: to shape an appropriate framework for overcoming pride God leads the sinner to realize his/her own limits through pain and death. This happens on the physical level automatically (so to speak) once the sinner rejects the primeval gift of God, Original Grace, and can no longer master the animalistic Darwinian propensities and parameters of life. And on the moral level through the experience of evil resulting from human misuse of freedom.

Antoine, please note that your conception of Original Grace is almost opposite to how I view Original Blessing. I see this blessing as some sort of a ‘rewiring’ of the billions of neurons of the Homo sapiens brain so that it could accept learning and invent language to become Mind and conscience with freedom to choose right from wrong. That freedom, although it makes it possible for a biological Homo sapiens to aspire to God’s Image,it does have a ‘dark side’ in that choosing wrong becomes Sin–which was not possible previous to the appearance of the dual biological/spiritual nature of humankind.

The final sentence here will Not satisfy some evangelicals in the matter of atonement for Original Sin, but it does circumvent the intrinsic unfairness that God would require that His Son suffer and die in order to appease His wrath.
Al Leo

1125

Thanks for your readiness to continue this dialogue, and confirming that we share some basic intuitions.

I absolutely agree with you that “the consequences of our sins are both personal, communal and long-lasting”, and in this sense with Joshua Swamidass’ speculation about “how sin propagates through generations”.

However, for the question of "propagation of Original Sin” I think the key to a fitting answer is this statement of yours:

Since the Fall, all of humanity is now in the same “state” such that no one person can claim to be better than another.

To the extent that this “state” is a consequence of the first sin in history (the Fall), the Fall has consequences that no other sin has.

The reason you (and I) give for the “sinful condition” of humanity after the Fall is that, for the sake of Redemption, God acts to the end that 1) sinners can remain on earth, and 2) no one person can claim to be better than another. And this amounts to say that since the Fall every human person comes into existence lacking the state of “original Grace” Adam was endowed with before the Fall.

Obviously, no sin after the first sin can cause this specific damage because the damage is already in place. However, any human sin would have been the Fall, if it had been the first human sin. In this sense it holds that we all are “Adam” when we sin: “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12) and “one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people” (Romans 5:18).

As such, the reason we are giving (i.e.: “no one person can claim to be better than another”) does not entail genealogical descent from the first sinner but simply the fact of being a human person in the image of God, that is, a creature sharing a body like Jesus’s body, and being called to eternally love God by doing God’s will while sojourning on earth and, therefore, accountable toward God.

If one mistakenly assumes that to be a human person (in the sense just defined) one has to be “a genealogical descendant of Adam”, then one reaches the (mistaken) conclusion that the state of “Original Sin” is bound to genealogical ancestry from Adam.

By contrast if one accepts (as I do) that God did also create human persons who are not genealogical descendants of Adam, the state of “Original Sin” emerges also any time such a human person comes into existence (as it becomes transmitted at the generation of each human person). This amounts to state that all “NON genealogical descendants of Adam” who got married with “genealogical descendants of Adam” necessarily became human persons before getting married and, since this very moment, shared in the state of “Original Sin” and were in need of Christ’s redemption, even if they did not genealogically descend from Adam.

Before going further, I would be very thankful to know whether so far this reasoning is clear for you, or some aspect requires a better justification.

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1126

@MOls:
As you ‘liked’ my previous post I dare to assume that we share common ground on the following statements:

  1. God made the first human person in the image of God [i.e.: a creature sharing a body like Jesus’s body, and being called to eternally love God by doing God’s will while sojourning on earth and, therefore, accountable toward God] in recent times [later than 15,000 and not later than 5,300 BP] amid a large population [guesstimate of 14 million] of anatomically modern humans.

  2. Then God created a primeval community of human persons through: a) creating other human persons (males and females) the same way as he created the first one, and b) marriage between human persons.

  3. All these persons were created in a state of “Original Grace”, that is, free from pain, death, and selfish Darwinian tendencies.

  4. One of the primeval human persons, ‘Adam’, transgressed an explicit commandment of God. This first sinner ‘Adam’ may –but must not– be the first human person referred to in point 1.

  5. God was keen to redeem the sinners and to this aim: a) allowed them to remain on earth without “Original Grace”, and b) decided to create all human persons after the first sin lacking “Original Grace” as well.
    In particular, all human persons who were not genealogical descendants of ‘Adam’ came into existence (were generated) lacking “Original Grace”, in the state of the so (badly) called “Original Sin”.

Point 1 above answers your first question: “ When did God start holding people responsible for their moral failings?”

Now we can try to answer your other very good second question: “ Did God hold the entire population responsible all at once?”

The guesstimate for “entire population” you refer to is 14 million.

Most of this population became human persons at the moment referred to in Genesis 9: 3-6, that is, immediately after the end of the Flood. This is why the Flood narrative can appropriately be considered a “second Creation” narrative, or more precisely the narrative about “the completion of mankind’s creation”.

This completion happened without marriage between non-genealogical and genealogical descendants of ‘Adam’, the same way as the creation of the first human person in point 1 before.

Before Genesis 9:3-6, the population of human persons increased as described in point 2, and there was also marriage between non-genealogical and genealogical descendants of Adam. However, the non-genealogical descendants became human persons in the state of “Original Sin” (i.e.: lacking “Original Grace” and needing Redemption by Jesus) before getting married. I think the narrative of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6: 2-4 supports this interpretation.

I would be thankful to know your opinion about this answer, which may help me to formulate things better and possibly includes further interesting questions.

1127

the top preditor in a food chain is responsible for not eliminating his resource but to take care of it for self preservation. The point if Genesis is not to tell you your rights but to explain your obligations as we have become like God as in becoming system aware. In the law of evolution God has always held creation re

In the beginning god wants to make humankind in his image sounds like he failed.He did make us in his image, but with the fall, e.g. puberty he allowed us to become a self system that separates from God in order to come back to him in love. The issue with consciously being “selfs” is that we can turn into reflection of the God we believe in - which is the reason some do so vehemently deny the existence of God, particularly because of our logical incoherence. To those who do not do logic this is not a problem. For a child it is conceivable that God is like Santa and fulfills your wishes upon prayer because he loves you - particularly if we teach them such rubbish. It makes a great basis for the prosperity church business model.

When it comes to the modell as the fall as the poetic description of puberty,when do you start to make a child responsible for it’s actions? is it magically happening at the day they turn 18 - or 21. Forget about mankind, when do we become morally responsible for our own actions, and when did our parents and their parents …and against whom?

1128

bringing it to a better analogy is to look at your responsibilities as a father towards your child and via versa as to debate it on a philosophical level free of the biblical narrative.

1129

Albert, I thank you for acknowledging that my “final sentence”

Indeed, my “final sentence” follows from the view that God’s mercy is intrinsic to human nature. You cannot coherently define the very beginning of humanity without invoking God’s merciful creation. This perspective is crucial to understand the whole response of God to human sin, and in particular the state of the fallen human condition after the first sin.

In fact, this is nothing other than the theology already contained in the impressive paintings of the “Throne of Mercy” or “Throne of Grace”, which spread during the Middle Age in Central and Western Europe.

By contrast, I do not understand why you state that “my final sentence”

Could you please be more explicit on this?

Meanwhile I wish you the Holy Spirit’s blessing in tomorrow’s Pentecost day!

1130

Marvin I would like to be sure that I understand well your claim.

Te question @MOls raises is:

“ When did God start holding people responsible for their moral failings?”

Your proposal is:

We should debate this question “on a philosophical level” without taking into account the biblical narrative, the same way as we debate the question:

Am I right with this interpretation of your post?

1131

Antoine, I hope you (and other contributors to this Forum) will forgive my lack of scholarship in the history of theological thought. For example, how should I interpret Calvanism?. Before joining this Forum, I thought that, in accepting Calvanistic dogma one accepted a belief that, due to the Original Sin of the first human(s), each subsequent human must come into this World of no grater value than ‘a soiled rag’ (to catch menstrual flow?), and can ONLY be saved by professing Jesus as Savior.

I am not truly surprised that the Haraasmas and Christy could show me that modern Calvanism is much deeper and richer than that. And yet, as a human father who thrice has held his newborn babe in his arms for the first time, totally amazed at the miracle I was witnessing, I could NOT believe that our loving Heavenly Father could love it less–despise it, actually. My experience, as a Christian training how to "do science", forced me to look for a 'paradigm shift’. The Christian Creeds offered by the Roman church, as well as those offered by Luther and Calvin (as far as I understood them), fell short of what I was looking for. As it turned out, the paradigm shift I was looking for involved the matter of timing--one that the theory of evolution resolved..

In constructing one’s Worldview, one usually starts with (a set of) Axioms, and proceeds logically from there. Many (most?) Christians think that their Faith should guide their actions, rather than some Worldview that depends (to any great extent) upon human reason. But why shouldn’t the two be congruent rather than opposed? They are congruent if the Axioms are tweeted a bit.

The author(s) of Genesis, and most of its interpreters until Darwin, seem to accept these axioms:
(1) God is perfect & therefore what He creates is perfect (at least initially.)
(2) God created humankind instantaneously, and so humankind was, at least at that moment, perfect.
(3) Humankind was given freedom to act either sinfully or morally good.
(4) Humankind was given the knowledge of exactly how God views the concepts of: perfection, justice & moral goodness.
(5) The first humans chose to Sin (disobedience or pride) & so they and their progeny deserved punishment.

IF we really accept the Truth of Evolution, and accept that God chose to create Humankind over a vast expanse of time, then we must accept the reality that His view of perfection, justice, and moral goodness differs markedly from what our ANE ancestors accepted as axiomatic, and expressed in th OT. Jesus, as the perfect human example of what God’s loving ‘nature’ is like, forces us to replace the axiom that God the Father is the dispenser of wrathful justice and retribution.

I fully realize that my Worldview may well be considered heresy by the majority of the Christian community, but when a defense of our Faith includes words like the Fall or Original Sin, some sort of door closes in my mind. Can’t help it!
Thanks for the blessing. The whole world needs it.
Al Leo

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1132

I think that Genesis 2:1-6 needs a fresh look.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, along with everything in them.
2 On the seventh day God was finished with his work which he had made, so he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 God blessed the seventh day and separated it as holy; because on that day God rested from all his work which he had created, so that it itself could produce.

4 Here is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. On the day when Adonai , God, made earth and heaven,
5 there was as yet no wild bush on the earth, and no wild plant had as yet sprung up; for Adonai , God, had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no one to cultivate the ground.
6 Rather, a mist went up from the earth which watered the entire surface of the ground.

Verse 4 introduces the 7th day as a Lord’s Day. It was not a day of rest, but a day of completion. Rest is what God told His people to Remember it as. Thou shalt work 6 days. Like I did, but the 7th day will take care of itself.

A Lord’s Day on earth is 1000 years. While God rested the earth took care of itself just fine for 1000 years. This time period would mess up a lot of time dating. But there would be no death. The verse about the seeds and herbs reads that they did not go back into the ground, nor did any fruit from the trees. For one, no one tilled the ground and there was only a mist. What God planted the first week, never died nor germinated.

Genesis 1:30
“And to every wild animal, bird in the air and creature crawling on the earth, in which there is a living soul, I am giving as food every kind of green plant.” And that is how it was.”

The natural economy for humans and all animal life was the seeds and fruit and nothing was left to die or germinate. Because in order to germinate a seed has to die. The process did not leave anything to die. I would say that internally the body of a son of God and all animals effeciently “burned” up all content as calories. There was no need for fertilizer, because what God had planted as plants and trees, did not generate more of each kind, until God cursed the ground, and everyone had to till and replant, because things started to decay and die, and weeds were introduced. There would still be another 1500 years for scientist, perfect and knowledgeable sons of God, to destroy and re-terriform the earth, burying deep into the earth and starting over dozens of times even before the Flood. There was no rain, so they had to move sea water thousands of miles inland to get the water they needed, not to mention digging deep as well. I am sure they all had different opinions how to do things, like today, except they got them done, not stuck in political gridlock.

On day 6 per Genesis 1-27, God created many sons of God in God’s image. They were individually male and female, not separate genders. Sounds like today? Born without a gender. But there were thousands. Because after 1000 years, God took an unamed one, planted a Garden and placed that unnamed one in that Garden. Adam was not given a name, until Adam named all the animals God brought to him to name. It was only then, that God made biological genders for his image. God’s image was a covering of light, in the Garden, God made a male version and a female version but both still had a covering of light. Adam was then given a time start. The fact that Adam was 130 when Seth was born, shows 2 things.

Adam was in the Garden 30 years. Cain and Abel were born there and their births were painless. The remaining 100 years applies to death. At the fall, the light covering was lost, spiritual death. The spirit at birth for each descendant would remain in the presence of God in heaven. Biological birth would now mean pain and suffering and even premature death. Isaiah 65:20
“No more will babies die in infancy,
no more will an old man die short of his days —
he who dies at a hundred will be thought young,
and at less than a hundred thought cursed.”

Isaiah promises a return to a pre-fallen state, but not perfection. The point is Adam had to wait until 100 years after the fall, to receive a blessing from God. So 130 years after the two separate genders, Seth was born, but only in Adam’s fallen image. Seth only had a body and soul, and his spirit was in the presence of God. Compare the birth of Cain and that of Seth.

Now there were thousands of sons of God, and they were multiplying for a thousand years. Seth himself had to wait 105 years, but when Enosh was born, Adam’s descendants “men” began to seek out the Lord. For the next few generations the time of the firstborn son shortened. Then when Methusala was born it jumped way back up. Why? Because those generations of “men” had many daughters before the birth of a son, and Noah either did not marry, or only had daughters for 500 years. I tend to think Noah did not marry, but attempted to live as righteous as he could as a fallen human, in a world where now there was a strange combination of half fallen humans with sons of God still with bodies of light. The sons of God seemed to be experimenting with all those daughters genetically. God destroyed them all in a Flood that did destroy them all. I think that one or two of Noah’s sons brought a pure son of God as a “wife” onto the ark, and God allowed it, to the dismay of Noah.

Anyway, just some food for thought with a more literal and differently accurate interpretation.

1133

I agree. But suppose someone wants to be like God but not to be with God . What can God do?

1134

I don’t believe I have ever met somewhat who fits that description. History is full of humans (mostly men) who, in life, attempt to usurp the power that only God has over humankind, but they are all fated to fail because they are all mortal, and their physical power dies with them. The ones that we should fear the most are those whose evil ideas (memes) live on in the Noosphere.

Much of this depends on how each of us imagines what our existence in the afterlife will be like if we have ‘lived the Good Life’. Will we be be joined, or somehow integrated, with our Creator? Or will be separate but enjoying His /Her company? In preferring the latter, someone (?) expressed it thusly: "I would rather taste sugar rather then be sugar.
Al Leo

1135

Thanks Albert.

Regarding:

  • the “humans (mostly men) who, in life, attempt to usurp the power that only God has over humankind”

and

  • “the ones that we should fear the most […] whose evil ideas (memes) live on in the Noosphere.”

What (according to you) will their existence in the afterlife be like?

1136

yes as to the point at which we make people responsible for their own actions in a legal framework. At what point is the father responsible and when is theresponsibility with the “child” and what is the criterion if not a particluar birthday.

1137

Hope you all had a god pentecost. Missed it mostly, doing Corona in the Lab.

The mistake is to see think of the mortality as a punishment for sin. God never says that if you eat from the tree I will kill you but states that the separation from his authority makes you responsible for your own actions and makes you mortal. It is a logical consequence of not defining your self in the eternal father but in your own material self. That makes you by default a perishable item as the material is subjet to time. Once you understand death not to be a judgement call of God demanding your death for your sin the whole conflict of substitutional atonement vanishes and you can understand the bible as a philosophically coherent story to explain a theistic worldview that allows you a meaningful interaction with reality. Jesus died for me in a way so I can understand life in a way that allows me te return to eternal life like he did, to live like him in the hearts of every Christian. As I realised at my mother in law’s funeral
To live forever is the art
to learn to live in Jesus heart.

This is why Jesus is the way to the father. It is that moment where you realise that Jesus lives on inside you, like God, when you are bon again, born into a life that goes beyond your physical and temporal limits. You suddenly can learn to live in the hearts of all those he lives in.

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1138

I guess that was what cost me my membership in an apologetics forum that I questioned the bodily resurrection, asking why would one want to be any body that presents a seperate individuality from God rather than being part of him. By what feature would one want to be distingiushable from God or Jesus and why. To await bodily resurrection to remain separate from God represnts to me the ultimate sin, the desire to be forever a self separate from God.

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1139

In Matthew 22: 23-32 we read that the Sadducees, “who say there is no resurrection”, challenged Jesus with a question. Jesus replied:

“You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Here we are clearly taught by Jesus that there is bodily resurrection.

I totally agree that “the desire to be forever a self separate from God” is the ultimate sin. In fact the core of any sin consists in “not wanting to be with God”.

So, if Jesus attaches such a great importance to the bodily resurrection, it means that the bodily resurrection is the way to become part of God.

1140

We make people responsible for their own actions in a legal framework on the basis that at adolescence children acquire the cognitive structure of proportionality underpinning accountability relationship and sense of law.

“A particular birthday” is necessary because legal order requires promulgation of definite times, as for instance in contracts.

The formal operational stage (cognitive structure of proportionality) is supported by developmental cognitive psychology and is possibly related to the development of neuronal networks. However, it does not imply any observable anatomical or genetic change, and for the time being we cannot define which are the neural correlates of moral and legal responsibility.

We can conjecture that something similar happens in evolution: the development of the brain reaches a stage that makes it possible to become the body of a human person accountable toward God and other humans. It is at this moment that God declares that “humankind is made in the image of God”.

However, there is an important difference:

In case of the child, the fact of becoming aware of moral and legal responsibility does not mean the beginning of personal identity: we assign personal identity to the developing human body before this age. The ultimate reason is that we acknowledge that each creature belonging to “humankind” today is in the image of God. But this presupposes God’s declaration that “humankind in the image of God”. Before this declaration (Genesis 9:3-6) no creature was in the image of God and therefore no creature shared personal identity. After this declaration each creature sharing a human body (even a child or an embryo) is in the image of God and shares personal identity.

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1141

it’s not about “not wanting to be with God” as we all want to, it is the bit about wanting to be an individual unit, especially a physical entity. I guess for a lot of people the after life is is the place where they think that all their wishes will be fulfilled so they can live happily ever after idirect access to their wish granter.

1142

This claim:

seems to contradict this other claim:

Thanks in advance for clarifying.

1143

The sense of “innate Justice” that I acquired early in my moral development forced me to believe that those who pass evil on to future generations should suffer in the afterlife. (Piaget/Kornberg Level #1) Yet, as I’ve grown older, I think it unlikely that a loving God has created some sort of hell for this purpose. Thus, I must admit my ignorance as to the fate of such evildoers. Not so strange, since I’m not at all positive what awaits those who are 'saved and deserving of heaven’. I don’t fear the loss of my individuality as I leave this earthly life, as long as I am rewarded with a closeness with my Creator and those whom I have known and loved.
Al Leo

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