Even though I do not go to Klax’s extremes, I would agree as far as saying that many treatments of accountability has all the flavor of an ad-hoc Band-Aid on a theology which is fundamentally flawed. Accountability is naturally and logically dictated by capability.
I think these arguments are forced and problematic. I’m fine with admitting that Scripture simply does not map neatly onto human evolutionary history.
When we are talking about evolutionary history, it is simply a fact that the line is blurred. Species evolve as populations. Changes are very gradual and happen over many generations. I do not believe that there was ever a generation of human children that were so fundamentally different from their parents in capacities that the children were humans and the parents were animals.
I also don’t agree that the prohibition against homicide is some sort of fundamental marker of human morality and accountability to God and image-bearing-ness.
Sure. But as people who know more about natural history, we can certainly talk about humans that the biblical audience knew nothing about, and we can affirm their humanity, whether it was emerging or fully established. We just can’t make retro-active judgments about this population being “image of God” humans and that population being “pre-image of God” humans. I don’t really know why anyone feels the need to make those designations anyway.
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Yes, if by “capability” you also intend that humans can achieve to enter the kingdom of heaven with the help of Jesus Christ’s grace.
Indeed, only if human beings are called and ordered by God to become like God in heaven, can they be accountable to God for sinning, and in particular for killing other human beings.
In that sense, I fully agree to your statement that:
In any case, “capability” should not be reduced to “mental-algorithmic capabilities”. Otherwise you would equate humans to “artificial intelligence (AI) devices”.
Humans are called to eternal life in God, whereas AI-devices aren’t (even if AI-devices become one day mentally more “capable” than humans).
Accordingly, humans are morally accountable toward God for their actions, whereas AI-devices aren’t.
“morally accountable” is important in the theology of Genesis 9:3, 5-6, and so it is a part of Genesis’ use of the word “human”, very much in agreement with your claim.
Christy, I would be thankful if you could explain more in detail what do you mean by this claim, as it seems you are contradicting Revelation.
Indeed, in Genesis 9:5-6 “the prohibition against homicide” appears definitely tightly united with “accountability to God” and “image-bearing-ness”:
God definitely establishes that “ from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being” (Genesis 9:5), and the reason is: “for in the image of God has God made mankind (Genesis 9:6).
It’s the reason, not the cause. I don’t see how God giving it as a reason for a command puts a line in history establishing image of God where there wasn’t before. I don’t read it as humans now being in the image of God caused God to prohibit murder.
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Thanks Christy for this clarification.
Thus, I get the impression we find common ground in the following statement:
The explicit and universal prohibition of murder in Genesis 9:5-6 entails that since this very moment the whole population of homo sapiens is submitted to this prohibition, so that each human being is accountable to God for killing another human being.
If we agree in this, the further question arises:
Before the universal prohibition of murder in Genesis 9:5-6, could it be that only one segment of homo sapiens was submitted to God’s prohibition of killing each other?
My answer is YES:
Before the flood, only a little population in ANE was submitted to God’s prohibition of murder, the population Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 belonged to, which increased to become the population around Noah in Genesis 5-6.
Millions of homo sapiens in other parts of the world (America, Tasmania, etc.) were not accountable to God for killing each other, the same way as today lions are not accountable for killing the cubs of other lions, or chimps for killing each other.
I would be thankful for your answer to this question .
I don’t the Scripture answers those questions definitively and it is just speculation.
In my mind, there are two issues, morality and sin and what the Bible is typically interested in.
I think that humans developed the capacity for moral reasoning and established communities where human life was valued and murder was considered immoral long before our hypothetical Cain and Abel and long before God revealed anything to the ancient Near East about being the “image of God.” I would think of the capacity to value life and see the taking of life as something you are guilty of as general revelation, the law being written on their heart, etc. Were they accountable before God? Well, yes in some sense we are accountable before God for acting on the moral light available to us. If you know the good you ought to do and don’t do it, you sin according to James.
But I think “sin” is more than just general immorality in the context of God’s covenental relationships with humans, whether we are talking about the Israelite ancestors pictured by the family of Adam and Eve or Noah or Abraham or David. In these cases with sin we aren’t talking about violating some inborn moral awareness. God revealed specific commands and made promises and humans violated the terms of the relationship. Righteousness is described with reference to keeping God’s commands and right relationship with him in light of his holiness, not in terms of general morality and respecting the value of other human life. I think it is this former kind of sin/righteousness that is usually in view in the Bible, not general wickedness or moral uprightness.
The Bible is the story of God’s dealings with Israel. God’s dealings with people groups outside the covenant isn’t of interest unless it is a foil for establishing Israel’s identity. So when we ask these questions I think we need to keep in mind the Bible isn’t a theological treatise on the origin of universal human sin and moral accountability. It’s a story of a specific group at a specific time and it addresses the issues and questions they found most relevant.
If I understand well you are claiming that we Christians should not consider the Old Testament as part of God’s revelation for the whole humankind but rather keep in mind that the Torah is basically a theologico-poltical constitution of the ancient people and state of Israel.
Come again? No. These aren’t mutually exclusive things. There is no reason why God’s revelation for all humankind cannot be revealed through the lens of an ancient people and the state of Israel. But we need to remember the lens when we try to discern the universal truths about God’s character and the universal nature of humanity. We also need to remember that we bring our own lenses when we come to the Bible looking for answers and sometimes it is the case that God did not see fit to reveal the specific answers we are looking for when he revealed himself to Israel.
Thanks for this clarification. I fully agree with you!
I think that the prohibition of murder in Genesis 9:3, 5-6 is revelation for all humankind.
You rightly state as well:
I think the term “general revelation” you use is of upmost importance.
The way the command of God prohibiting homicide is formulated in Genesis 9:3, 5-6 clearly shows that it has universal extent, and is not a “specific command” for “the Israelite ancestors”.
God’s general revelation in Genesis 9:3, 5-6 means that since this very moment God writes on the heart of each human being the foundation of morality and law: “from each human being” God “will demand an accounting for the life of another human being […] for in the image of God has God made mankind.”
It is the “law” referred to in Romans 2:14-16:
14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts , their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
Thus, it is fitting to assume that by the declaration of Genesis 9:3, 5-6 the whole population of Homo sapiens (up to several millions all over the world) acquire “consciences bearing witness” and awareness of having to give to God an accounting for their sins, according to Romans 2:12:
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.
On the other hand, it is noticeable that in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, God clearly considers a sin that Cain kills his brother but does not yet proclaims the universal prohibition of homicide. Why is this delayed to Genesis 9:3, 5-6? A plausible explanation is that at the time of “Cain and Abel” only a segment of the Homo sapiens population was submitted to this prohibition.
As I have already said, clear signs of “accountability relationship” and of “God’s judgement after death” appear only after 5,300 BP, first in Ancient Near East (ANE), and thereafter in other civilizations.
Putting all these elements together we reach the following coherent picture:
At around 5,300 BP God made a little population of Homo sapiens in ANE in the image of God, and gave them the commandment of loving each other, and in particular wrote on their hearts the prohibition of murder. To this population belonged the first sinners (“Adam and Eve”) and their progeny (“Cain and Abel”).
This population increased to become the violent and corrupt population (likely several hundreds of thousands) of Genesis 6:5-13, which perished in the flood (Noah and his family excepted).
You claim:
I would like to stress that about such a “capacity for moral reasoning” (long before Cain, Abel, and ANE) nothing is said in revelation. So it is fitting to conclude that the moral capacity you refer to is nothing other than evolved animal in group morality, similar to the morality we find today in chimps and many other animals, but it is not awareness of being accountable toward God “for humankind is in the image of God”, i.e.: moral responsibility derived from the God’s call to humankind for being like God and thus ordered to eternal life.
In other words, before Genesis 9:3,5-6, millions of Homo sapiens in all continents may have killed each other without having to give an account to God, the same way as lions or chimps do today.
Actually you yourself say the same in another thread, when referring to the story of Noah’s flood you claim:
The people who perished in the flood was morally accountable to God the same way we are today and those in the “coming judgment” will be. This is definite revelation, sustained by both, the Old and the New Testaments.
By contrast, your claim that long before Cain, Abel, and Noah “humans developed the capacity for moral reasoning and established communities where human life was valued and murder was considered immoral” is pure speculation, neither sustained by revelation nor by science.
Yes, so I guess the question is did God volitionally write this on all human hearts at a moment in time or did humans as a population develop this capacity over time under his sovereign guidance of their natural development. I think I would tend toward that latter. Or in other words, was the capacity to bear God’s image bestowed on humanity in a specially creative act of divine intervention in the course of human development, or did the capacity to bear God’s image develop naturally and at some point, God called humans to do it.
But anthropologists date the emergence of modern humans back 100,000 years and I’m not comfortable with the idea that humans were basically animals until a few thousand years ago.
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I get the impression that at the end of the day the two “alternative” views you are proposing amount to the same.
In either case, we take for settled that today “the prohibition of homicide is written on all human hearts”. Therefore, from our temporal perspective there is a time for which it holds that: “From now on the prohibition of homicide is written on the heart of each human being, and from each human being God will demand an accounting for the life of another human being”. And this “demand ” on the part of God involves a judgement coming after death, followed by a sentence of either eternal life or damnation.
So, whichever way you look at it, from this time on, humankind is no longer a mere biological clade Homo sapiens developing according to evolutionary mechanisms, but a community of beings ordered to eternal life and called to live respecting each other according to the “Golden rule”.
Certainly, cooperative behaviors and even immersive religious rituals may have evolved naturally to a certain extent, along with selfish evolutionary mechanisms. Notwithstanding there must have been a moment where todays situation was settled: God will judge human beings at the end of their life, while He will not judge non-human animals.
I think “the specially creative act of divine intervention in the course of human development” to “bestow on humanity the capacity to bear God’s image” can be compared to the “specially divine intervention” in the course of human history that God did at the incarnation, to make human flesh into the body of God’s Son. In both cases “flesh” becomes the body of someone with personal identity (‘divine’ at the incarnation of God, ‘human’ at the creation of man in the image of God) without any visible disruption of natural developments in the surrounding world.
Could you please try to explain the reason why you are not comfortable with this “idea”?
I get the impression that your “feeling of discomfort” derives from the “prejudice” that “modern humans” 100,000 BP are “the same humans” we are today. This view has been superseded by the relevant data we have now. So, you may be interested in reading this study which emphasizes that: “H. sapiens is a lineage with deep and likely diverse African roots that challenge our use of terms such as ‘archaic H. sapiens ’ and ‘anatomically modern humans’.“ Actually, “modern humans” have no definite origin but many ones (see this other article).
The following consideration may help to overcome the “prejudice” of equating “modern humans” 100,000 BP with the people living today, and get to a view that is consistent with both, science and revelation:
When you use the terms “humans” and “animals”, you are defining them on the basis of the situation we meet today, when the species are distinct from each other. Today there is a sharp difference between humans and animals.
Accordingly, the reasonable attitude is to ask:
When did this sharp difference become established as it is today, and did Homo sapiens reach the full suite of characteristics we see in contemporary people ?
The 23 anthropologists involved in this study give the answer: by 12,000 BP!
And also ask:
When do we have evidence of populations with awareness of being accountable toward each other and toward God?
You find the answer to this question in the British Museum: At the dawn of civilizations, after 5,300 BP!
That’s just it. I don’t believe there was ever a point in time where a “sharp difference” was established. I think the transition was gradual and continuous and speaking of it as a moment in time and not a continuum of development doesn’t seem right.
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But then today no “sharp difference” is established either!
This is in clear contradiction with this other statement of yours:
Thanks for clarifying your position.
Not true. We establish these differences by observing humans as a population and noting their capacities and understanding what Scripture says about humanity. That definitely establishes human uniqueness in comparison with animals. What it doesn’t do is draw a sharp line in evolutionary history.
It is specifically because what we call humanity emerged on a continuum that we can’t draw lines and say “from this point forward - humans, but before that-animals.” It’s not a contradiction, it’s a premise and a conclusion.
So, you acknowledge that today “human uniqueness in comparison with animals is definitely established” on the basis of “understanding what Scripture says about humanity”.
This obviously implies that at the time when Scripture was written, about 2,600 BP, “human uniqueness in comparison with animals” was as definitely stablished as it is today.
My question to you:
Was “human uniqueness in comparison with animals” definitely established when writing emerged, at the dawn of civilization, about 5,300 BP?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Just because a ramp is gradual to get to the second floor does not mean that there is not a ‘sharp difference’ between first and second floors.
That would certainly seem to be the case, as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years.
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Yes. But it doesn’t mean that 2,600 BP is the dividing line.
Yes, but I would say long before that as well. Probably before the point that left some kind of archaeological evidence we can point to as evidence.
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Excellent Dale!
What I am interesting in, is to establish where “the second floor" is, that is:
The time when we can state: “ From now on the whole Homo sapiens is in the image of God, and from each human being God will demand an account for the life of another human being”.
In my view, such a time is for humanity as important as the time when the incarnation of God took place, and therefore God has surely revealed it: Indeed, Genesis 9:3, 5-6 fulfills all the conditions to be considered such a revelation!
This means:
Hundreds of thousands of years ago we cannot state with certainty that “human uniqueness in comparison with animals is definitely established”. By contrast we can do it by about 5,300 BP.
So for all practical legal purposes and theological elaboration it is fitting to assume that “the second floor” lies by 5,300 BP:
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The first intervention of God to create humankind in the image of God (the moment referred to in Genesis 1: 26-27) takes place at about 5,300 BP at the emergence of writing.
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And the final intervention of God to make each Homo sapiens in the image of God and “accountable for murder” (the moment referred to in Genesis 9:3, 5-6) takes place a bit later, at the end of the flood, about 5,000 BP as witnessed by the explosion of civilizations all around the world (see British Museum).
What, two year olds aren’t the most violent humans? Because they’re not solipsists at 6 months?