Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
1733
Antoine
I gave you a like because I like you : ) and 90% of what you say. 95. Quantitatively. Our disordered passions are in our 4 billion year lineage genes. The fault is life itself. Passion. Passion, life is intrinsically disordered, in its order. All great art has to be flawed or we’d be bored by it. That’s a metaphor. Sin, original or otherwise is a metaphor for the sapient condition.
And yes, Jesus fixed it all in revealing God, in revealing the certainty that all will be well for all in transcendence is it always has been from eternity. Truly fixed, not just in promise. For I am not. I learned things about myself in caring for my mother that I would rather not. I am damned with that now. No one chooses damnation. No one chooses their parents, their genes and how experience plays upon those instruments. No one is damned in the transcendent. Or God is worse than useless.
You and I are immensely, helplessly privileged in our human frailty and our inability to ‘save’ anyone is not projected on God. If it were, give me Hell any day.
It’s interesting that you reject the God of the Bible – “…from Genesis through Revelation” were your approximate words, but pluck Jesus out of it while eschewing his words (not to mention the epistler’s), and mold him to your imagination.
It means that for the biblical audience at the time Genesis was written, about 2,600 BP:
The term “humankind” in Genesis 9:5 referred to the homo sapiens population at that time, which exhibited the full suite of features of living people in our days, as we are taught by evolutionary science.
And the difference between “humankind” and “animals” (or “everything that lives and moves”) in Genesis 9:3-5 was as sharp as it is in our days, as we are taught by evolutionary science.
So we seem to agree in the following conclusion:
We can with certainty state that after 2,600 BP 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 other words, we can with certainty establish that after 2,600 BP the universal prohibition of murder according to Genesis 9:3,5-6, is written by God on the heart of each human being.
So here you are acknowledging two important things:
The emergence of writing reveals with certainty the presence of human beings with awareness of moral and legal accountability.
You are not sure if this is the case “long before”, as you use the word “probably” and you give no reference to the “some kind of archeological evidence we can point to as evidence”, and no argument why this supposed “archeological evidence” reveals “awareness of being accountable toward God and humankind”.
So the reasonable attitude is to build on what we are sure of, i.e.:
To take 5,300 BP as the time when “God created humankind in the image of God” and basis for further elaboration concerning biblical interpretation and theological matters.
Undoubtedly, “long before” 5,300 BP we can certainly talk today about homo sapiens and other hominins the biblical audience when Genesis was written knew nothing about, as you rightly claim:
Nonetheless it does not make sense to consider that the prohibition against homicide implies “we should not kill such hominins”, as they are not living now.
So, the interesting question is: Were such creatures accountable to God for killing each other?
My answer is NO.
And the reason is that if this had been the case, then God would have proclaimed and revealed the universal prohibition of homicide at that time. Otherwise we can as well assume today that also lions are accountable for killing other lions, and chimps for killing other chimps.
In summary, we are led by revelation and evolutionary science to the following noteworthy conclusion:
God awaited that all these intermediate hominin varieties disappeared and the difference between homo sapiens and non-homo sapiens became as sharp as it is today to proclaim the universal prohibition of homicide.
The audience had no concept of hominins. The line between existing homo sapiens and other existing primates was abundantly clear. Nothing about the biblical revelation speaks to dividing homo sapiens from other homo sapiens or earlier hominins.
No. I don’t think writing coincides with moral awareness in any way. There are people groups today who have never developed writing systems for their languages. I don’t think the emergence of writing means anything. I think artifacts in writing preserve evidence about their thought processes, which could give you clues about their moral standards.
We don’t have such archaeological evidence and shouldn’t expect to find it. I’m perfectly content being uncertain about things that can’t be supported with evidence.
I think the reasonable attitude is to admit we can’t know.
I still don’t agree that God revealing that humans are created in the image of God means “from this point on” and not “in the past when I created humans.”
Right. But this assumes that image of God is causative of the prohibition not just the reason given as we have discussed. I don’t accept the premise that it was causative. I don’t see the link you insist on between these two things.
How do we know there was not other revelation God provided humanity at earlier times that was not preserved for us?
This makes no sense. We don’t assume lions are innocent of sin as predators because the Bible doesn’t specifically forbid lions to kill other lions.
In the visible decaying organism of your mother you were able to see the invisible eternal: Her personal identity stubbornly underpinning her transient genetic, pre-wired nature, your mother.
And this moved you to care for her, expressing your faith in love.
I don’t know what you may have learned about yourself in caring for your mother. But in any case sinful feelings and propensities do not matter for God at all, if you counter them with deeds of love.
How can you be “damned with that now”, if Jesus will judge us by claiming “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”?
In fact, in your mother’s dying breath Jesus himself was breathing his last.
It is God himself who establishes the link, as biblical revelation clearly speaks:
“And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” (Genesis 9: 5-6).
Because God made humankind in the image of God, human beings are called to be God’s representatives on earth and live loving and respecting each other. The prohibition of homicide is a straightforward consequence of this commandment of love.
This is exactly what I claim too!
The “line” was “abundantly clear” for the biblical audience at the time Genesis was written, about 2,600 BP.
This “abundantly clear line” was presupposed by the declaration of Genesis 9:3,5-6, to the aim that: “each human being is accountable to God for the life of another human being”, but humankind is allowed to use non-human animals for food.
‘Humankind’ is a relational concept: ‘Humankind’ begins to exist only when the line between existing Homo sapiens and existing primates became “abundantly clear”, that is, as clear as it is today.
For the time before the line between “existing Homo sapiens ” and “existing primates” was “abundantly clear”, Homo sapiens remains a fuzzy biological category. Thus, it is equivocal to use it to designate “human beings today” and “earlier hominins” as if they were the same biological species.
I apologize for repeating: Recent research challenges “our use of terms such as ‘archaic H. sapiens’ and ‘anatomically modern humans’.“
For the biblical audiences of all times the term “humankind in the image of God” refers to Homo sapiens at a moment when “the line between existing Homo sapiens and other existing primates” was “abundantly clear”. If the difference between human beings and animals had not yet been “abundantly clear” for the audience, the declaration of Genesis 9:3, 5-6 (containing the prohibition of murder) would have been confusing. Accordingly, before the moment this difference was “abundantly clear”, it was not fitting that God commanded “Homo sapiens and earlier hominins” to live respecting each other. And this means that before this moment “Homo sapiens and earlier hominins”, no matter how intelligent and smart these creatures may have been, could not have been ordered to eternal life.
And this explains while the biblical revelation says nothing in this respect.
As a matter of fact, the first writing coincides with cuneiform tablets containing contracts, registers, and law, and thereby awareness of moral and legal accountability.
We consider “people groups today” in the image of God and deserving human rights because they are Homo sapiensafter the time God made this lineage in the image of God. But for ascertaining this time writing systems are paramount. Had humanity not developed written law at all, could human morality not be considered universal and would it reduce to animal in-group morality.
And yet you claim that at the time when Genesis was written “the line between existing homo sapiens and other existing primates was abundantly clear”, that is, as clear as it is today.
So, you yourself admit we can know!
Indeed, the crucial question is:
At which time “the line between existing homo sapiens and other existing primates” became as clear as it is today or, equivalently, it was at the time Genesis was written?
Can we answer this question on the basis of the available data?
The answer is YES, namely:
At the time when Homo sapiens and chimps are already well defined lineages and there is no intermediate variety whatsoever (Neanderthal, Denisovan, Flores, or others) in between. And this means later than 12,000BP .
Natural selection is continuous, but natural deletion introduces discontinuity in evolution: Through elimination of intermediate varieties evolution lays the groundwork for the appearance of humankind as a community ruled by morality and law.
Accordingly, the “prohibition of murder” as established in Genesis 9:3, 5-6 makes sense only after 12,000 BP.
I completely agreed. But on the other hand: We should also be perfectly content being certain about things that can be supported with evidence!
"God revealing that humans are created in the image of God” means "God revealing that humans are called to live loving and respecting each other”, and therefore, “from this point on”, they are submitted to the prohibition of murder. This is exactly what revelation utters in Genesis 9:3, 5-6.
God provides humanity with all revelation that matters for eternal life, to the aim of filling the kingdom of heaven. Clear proof of this is that God provided humanity the revelation of the existence of angels and their fall. If God didn’t explicitly reveal us that “earlier homo sapiens and other hominins” are in the image of God and called to eternal life, we can safely conclude that God didn’t count on them to fill the places in “the great banquet of heaven”.
We assume that lions are “innocent of sin” as predators because the Bible does not declare them to be in the image of God, i.e.: submitted to the commandment of loving and respecting each other.
In fact, Genesis 9:5 clearly states that animals should not kill humans, but it doesn’t specifically forbid lions and chimps to kill other lions, respectively other chimps!
We are talking about two different discourses, science and theology. They are allowed to use the same terms in different ways. In theology people aren’t concerned with biological species. In science people aren’t concerned with image of God. There is no reason why both disciplines can’t talk about “humanity” in the ways appropriate to their discourse context.
Knowing that we are currently on one side of a transition and identifying a point in history as on the same side of a transition is not the same thing as knowing when exactly the transition happened or positing “a line” at the transition point.
I could have figured out lions were morally innocent for eating antelope without the Bible. I don’t believe they are morally accountable for killing humans either.
Frist of all I would like to thank you for continuing this conversation: I think your comments are leading us to a better understanding of both, science and theology.
Today the biological species are distinct: The difference between today’s existing humans and existing chimps is “abundantly clear”, as you rightly state. Actually, in science we take this distinctness as the standard for defining Homo sapiens and the other species.
In science we are taught that:
Homo sapiens and chimps today are two lineages that evolved by tiny leaps from common ancestors in the past.
The difference between these two lineages became as clear as it is today only in recent times, by about 12,000 BP, as a result from the disappearance of a huge number of intermediate varieties.
Clear signs revealing “universal moral principles” and “ accountability relationship” appear by about 5,300 BP with the emergence of writing.
These Points 1-3 regarding science entail that:
The further we go back in evolutionary history to times earlier than 12,000 BP, the fuzzier Homo sapiens becomes as a biological category to describe the biological reality, to the extent that recent research challenges “our use of terms such as ‘archaic H. sapiens’ and ‘anatomically modern humans’.“
This means that “humankind today” as a species does not originate from a single group of “earlier hominins”, and it is equivocal to use the term “Homo sapiens” to designate “humans today” and “earlier hominins” as if they were the same biological species .
In theology we are taught by biblical revelation in Genesis 9:3,5-6 that:
God created humankind in the image of God as a community ruled by the commandment of mutual love and respect, and therefore submitted to the prohibition of murder.
The prohibition against homicide presupposes that the difference between humankind and chimps at the time of the creation of humankind in the image of God was as clear as it is at later times when this prohibition holds, in particular today.
This Point 2 regarding theology clearly shows that in theology we are very much concerned with biological species, as the universal prohibition against homicide in Genesis 9:5-6 relies on the “abundantly clear difference” between Homo sapiens and non-human animals from the moment of its proclamation by God: Since this moment each Homo sapiens creature is a human being in the image of God and accountable to God for the life of another human being. This biblical teaching is the very foundation of law and a defense of humanity against any discrimination.
Moreover, science help us to a deeper understanding of Scripture. Indeed, Genesis reveals us that God created humankind in the image of God, but does not explicitly tells the time when God did this. However, if one reads what we are taught by theology in Point 2 in the light of what we are taught by science in the Points 2 and 3 above, one reaches the conclusion that God made humankind into a community of beings called to live respecting each other later than 12,000 BP but not later than 5,300 BP.
On the other hand, the principle that humans ought to live respecting each other should also be considered relevant for scientists, the very condition for the possibility of scientific work: By establishing the clear difference between humans and animals, evolution lays the groundwork for ensuring law, assigning rights, and thereby a science that truly serves humanity. One can call this “a fortunate accident”, as Richard Dawkins does. But it is equally legitimate to say that God guided evolution by means of a highly complex ecological regulation to bring about the conditions making it possible for humankind to be ruled by the commandment of mutual respect (the “Golden Rule”), and from the time these conditions were in place, God reveals this commandment to (“writes” it on the heart of) each human being coming into existence. To this extent, in science we are concerned with the fact that humans are in the image of God after all.
True enough!
From the perspective of revelation there is a point in history when “God made humankind in the image of God”, that is, a community of human beings called to live loving and respecting each other, the same way as it is a point in history when the Son of God became flesh. The commandment that humans should live respecting each other entails the universal prohibition against homicide proclaimed in Genesis 9:3,5-6.
As said, this prohibition presupposes that at the moment of its statement the line between existing Homo sapiens and other existing primates was as clear as it is today and at the time Genesis was written.
The evidence we have for the time being allows us to know that this point in history (“the moment of its statement”) lies between 12,000 BP and 5,300 BP.
Surely this is not the same thing as knowing “the day and the hour” when this point in history happened, but it is a good estimation that shows the interest of reading the Bible in the light of what we know by science. The same way as we can better estimate the date of Jesus Christ’s birth by reading the Gospels in the light of historical and scientific evidence.
I would like to come again to a point that has remained undiscussed:
On this basis, I endorse the following view:
I think this view is supported by you @Christy as well:
Also @mitchellmckain seems to argue along this line to some extent:
So, it seems we may find common ground in the following explanation:
At the end of the flood God definitely re-create the humankind by making all homo sapiens (up to possibly 14 millions) into a population of human beings called to live loving and respecting each other, and therefore accountable to God: “From each human being I [God] will demand an accounting for the life of another human being […] for in the image of God has God made mankind.” (Genesis 9:5-6). As a result, from this moment till today ALL peoples on earth share in the dignity of being in the image of God.
In the light of this explanation one can say that God made first a “beta-version” of humankind, and scheduled the “general release” for after the flood, and this way of doing is clearly motivated by God’s mercy.
You evaluate whether lions are capable of moral reasoning and decision making.
As to the flood I don’t agree with your basic theological message. I don’t think warnings of judgment have anything to do with atonement, since atonement is found only in Christ. I think the message is that judgment is imminent, repentance is required, and God in his grace supplies a means of salvation. Repent and God will be merciful and extend grace is a repeated theme throughout the Bible. I don’t think we are here on earth to atone for wickedness. I think we are here to work as stewards and ambassadors in God’s kingdom, promoting his justice and peace on earth as we live in transforming relationship with God. I don’t think God is oriented toward sin and its elimination, I think he is oriented toward his children whom he loves and all of his good creation whose harmonious flourishing he desires. Sin is a liability, but I don’t think it is the focus of God’s attention and divine plan. I also don’t believe the Flood narrative describes a literal global catastrophe, or that it historically destroyed all humanity (all humanity being image bearers). I think the point of the narrative is to teach theology, not history, and definitely not some kind of genealogy of image bearing humans.
Lions are incapable of moral reasoning and decision making.
Therefore, a lion is not called to live loving and respecting other lions, to the aim of reaching eternal life.
Thus, God did not make lions in the image of God.
But you could apply the same reasoning to human babies to conclude that human babies are not in the image of God as long as they are not capable of moral reasoning and decision making.
Nope. I think image of God is a specific calling given to humans not an entailment of moral decision making capabilities.
I don’t think any creature is “accountable” before God for using capacities it doesn’t have. Lions are not capable of moral reasoning and therefore are not morally accountable. Infants are not capable of moral reasoning and are morally accountable. I don’t think moral accountability is necessarily linked to image of God the way you evidently do. I think the capacity for moral reasoning was a necessary prerequisite for God calling corporate humanity to be his image bearers. But I don’t think one thing entails the other. Saying an infant is created in the image of God is a statement about his or her belonging to corporate humanity, not his or her current or future moral capacities or moral accountability.
I also don’t think humans are offered eternal life because they love well. I think God loves humans and wants live with them forever. The motivation for the gift of eternal life is love and relationship, not God’s desire to offer a really nice reward for moral living.
I fully agree with your theological message regarding the flood, and formulate my “basic theological message” more precisely in the following points by quoting your words:
“God loves humans and wants live with them forever. The motivation for the gift of eternal life is love and relationship, not God’s desire to offer a really nice reward for moral living.”
Accordingly, human beings are called to live loving and respecting each other: “Human beings are on earth to work as stewards and ambassadors in God’s kingdom, promoting his justice and peace on earth as we live in transforming relationship with God”. This is the meaning of the Genesis’ statement that “God made humankind in the image of God”.
God desires “the harmonious flourishing” of humankind and at the very beginning created human beings without any sinful propensity (without “a sinful nature” @Anthony).
When humans dismissed God’s love and sinned, God in his mercy did not throw the sinners to hell but let them on earth to repent and open their hearts to the means of salvation God supplies in his grace through Christ’s atonement.
However, instead of repenting human sinners became more and more corrupt and full of violence (Genesis 6: 5-6, 11-12).
To overcome this generalized sinful state of humanity (“hell on earth”, @mitchellmckain says) God sent the flood: The message of the flood for the sinners of all times is that “judgment is imminent, repentance is required.”
By proclaiming the universal prohibition of homicide in Genesis 9:5-6 at the end of the flood God highlights again at the “new beginning” of humanity that “God loves humans” and wants humans to love and respect each other.
Please let me know whether you may agree to these points above.
I generally agree, yes. I’m not really committed to 3 and my personal thoughts on original sin and how that works and what it entails are ambivalent. I think we are given pictures and metaphors that don’t explain the nitty-gritty and since I’m not that committed to an original couple created sinless, I tend to think of original sin and its effects on humanity in corporate, not individual terms.
All right!
But your latter claim amounts to say that before original sin “humanity in corporate” was sinless. So, be it as “original couple” or as “humanity in corporate”, in the beginning God did NOT create humans with a sinful nature or propensities.
And the reason for this is that:
“God loves humans and wants live with them forever” and “The motivation for the gift of eternal life is love and relationship”.
But I think of that in terms of accountability, not absence of sinful propensities. I said that hypothetically, a human pair that had not been encultured into human community could potentially be free of sinful propensities, but I am personally agnostic that such a pair ever existed.
I don’t think sinlessness is a created state of being, it’s just the absence of making sinful choices. It’s God’s ideal that we live in harmony with him and others, and our sin thwarts that ideal.
The main tenets of my hypothesis are the following:
At some point in the Neolithic God made a pair or a little human population free of sinful propensities and sinful choices, and called them “to live in harmony with Goth and others”.
Short after they were created, these primeval humans thwarted God’s ideal by making a sinful choice, and as a consequence became submitted to sinful propensities.
Since this first sinful choice (“original sin”) all humans come into existence in a sinful humanity and thereby are submitted to sinful propensities as well (are born “with a sinful nature”).
Notwithstanding you may be “personal agnostic” about this hypothesis
I dare to ask:
Do you agree that my hypothesis fits well with revelation and is compatible with the available scientific data?
Yes, I think this fits with revelation and cannot be disproven by science. I think it runs into the same theological problems that have been noted in discussions of the genealogical Adam and Eve model though.