I think this is a magnificent statement of what we have to consider historical according to the teaching of Jesus Christ.
An interesting aspect is that the facts you refer to here are such that matter for salvation. Indeed, Jesus Christ seems to refer to Genesis always to the aim of highlighting facts that are relevant to reach eternal life: For Jesus truly real is what enhances our special relationship with God.
Accordingly, it seems fitting to adopt the following principle:
As Christians we are required to acknowledge as historical facts in Genesis only those referred to in the New Testament as part of Jesus Christ’s teaching about reaching eternal salvation and sharing God’s life.
Thanks in advance for your opinion.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
1794
I’ve been tracking this thread for a while and am finding it illuminating for understanding the nature of the relationship Christians understand themselves to be in with God. Standing on the outside as someone not committed to the central role given to the Bible I nonetheless have respect for the idea that this book can be regarded as the distillation of God’s working through our culture to repair our brokenness, or even to use it transformationally.
My non-biblical understanding of our brokenness has to do with our newish capacity for abstract reasoning and strategic planning. It makes us so much more powerful and adaptive than an animal whose strength lies in its armaments and physicality. Physical adaptions don’t drive an animal from the garden but the ability to regard the world instrumentally and choose the ends toward which we’d like it put does place us outside the natural order. But it is dangerous, especially when we turn that sort of thinking toward one another. There should be a commandment that cautions us not to objectify out neighbor. Perhaps another commandment should be levied against coopting the entire biosphere to the benefit of mankind alone lest we truly become alone, which would not be sustainable.
I don’t agree. I do not think people who don’t believe in a historical call of humanity or Fall are missing out on salvation in any way. Salvation isn’t about facts you mentally assent to, it’s about who you put your faith in.
If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you do believe in a historical call of humanity.
If you put your faith in humanity and back “the commandment that cautions us not to objectify out neighbor”, you are acknowledging God’s incarnation at the end of the day.
You might not believe there is a distinct historical moment in which all of humanity switched from uncalled to called. You just have to accept that “called” is the current situation.
I don’t make distinctions about “truly human.” All people are truly human, regardless of what they believe or accept about God or their human condition.
“Truly human” sounds like a discussion of ancestral forms and where to draw the line between the modern form and those preceded it. Perhaps it is more about claiming aspects of ones humanity. We all have the same basic biological package by way of evolution. Part of that endowment is a more fluid cognitive capacity which permits of point of service modification by culture, childhood development and even individuals, our much vaunted free will. Some cultural configuration can enhance while others may crimp individual flourishing. The same is true of some child rearing practices and most certainly by some world views. Perhaps “the call” consists first and foremost of the necessity to participate at all three levels in the flourishing of our corporate humanity. Our gift is the capacity for self modification but the price is the capacity for great self harm of the sort you might call sin.
You make distinctions about “called human”. What is the difference?
For me being “people” means being “truly human”, i.e.: Humankind “called” and ordered to share God’s life.
“Being human” is not what we “believe or accept about God or our human condition”, but what God believes and does about our human condition; it means the “special relationship” God wants to have with humans, as you refer to. The truth about humankind comes from God’s truth. So I absolute agree to your statement!
In particular, after Genesis 9:3, 5-6, God writes on the heart of all people (the collective subconscious of humanity) “the commandment that cautions us not to objectify out neighbor”: This amounts to a universal revelation of God’s incarnation, and defines what you call “the current situation”:
Genesis 9:3,5-6 marks the “point in history” when Homo sapiens becomes totally “Humankind in the image of God”. Since this moment all people in the world are “people in the image of God”, “called people”, “truly human”.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
1804
Like Allah through Muhammad? Or Trimurti through Krishna the eighth avatar of Vishnu?
I don’t understand this reference. I feel like very consistently throughout this thread I have been expressing my discomfort with drawing lines between human/not human or image of God/not image of God or called/not called in recent history. I don’t think the audience of the Bible or the Israelite ancestors who received specific revelation from God necessarily mark a division point in universal human history. I don’t think we should assume God did not interact with humans at much earlier points in time simply because we don’t have written records of that history.
But I do not conflate “human” or “humanity” with “image of God” and I think it is wrong to do so. I do not think humanity is derivative of image bearing or moral accountability or relationship with God.
Before thispoint in historyHomo sapiens creatures were not called to bear God’s image, i.e.: share God’s love, and reach eternal life. Consequently, such creatures did not have the capacity to sin .
Notice also that before this point in history it does not make sense to speak of Homo sapiens as a distinct biological species.
But we don’t know if it was a single point in history or many points in history, or when this happened, or if it was some kind of universal thing that got turned on like a light switch, or more like a cultural development that spread slowly through human communities. All of that is pure speculation. We know the present human condition. The details of how it worked for humans of deep past is something we cannot pinpoint and dissect. And frankly, it’s not relevant to our faith or lives.
Totally disagree. The Bible and the spiritual condition of humanity have absolutely no bearing on biological taxonomies and it is ridiculous to imply otherwise.
Species is a relational concept: Species don’t have properties exclusive to themselves, their properties mainly exist by virtue of their relationship to other species.
In particular, we define Homo sapiens by looking at how different it is from other species at the present time, and not by looking at properties exclusive to Homo sapiens itself.
At the present time species are distinct. For this reason, we can define them. The further back in evolutionary history we go, the indistinct becomes the lineage Homo sapiens, and the harder it is to establish which species best fits as the ancestor of today’s humans.
So, it is biologically impossible to establish when the species Homo sapiens begins with anything other than arbitrary criteria from a biological point of view .
To define Homo sapiens, we have to choose a moment in history as a standard. Which moment we choose is primarily determined by criteria other than biological ones.
As a matter of fact, the sharp distinction between Homo sapiens and other species in “the current situation” today, is the basis for establishing the prohibition of murder coherently.
So nothing speaks against assuming that evolution lays the groundwork for assigning rights, and is the way God uses to bring about a species called to be ruled by morality and law.
In summary, the fuzzy biological taxon Homo sapiens becomes the current sharp category “humanity” at the very moment it becomes “humankind in the image of God”, i.e.: the moment in history when God initiates “a special relationship” with humans.
I would be thankful to know whether you may find something “ridiculous” in these inferences.
Species is a taxonomic concept and the “relationships” involved in drawing lines between species are biological. We all know this. You can’t just play around with word senses and change what they are. Species boundaries don’t have anything to do with spiritual states.
Nope. That’s an unhelpful conflation and you don’t get to arbitrarily pick word meanings based on your religion. Both Homo sapiens and human have standard meanings in anthropology and biology, and those meanings don’t make reference to God. Plus the definition of human in anthropology includes the entire genus Homo, not just Homo sapiens
Sorry, I still think it is ridiculous to bring the Bible into the discussion of terms that are assigned by criteria that have nothing to do with the Bible.