There are ‘laws of love’ – moral law and ‘family rules’ with consequences for not following them, so it’s both. Love – and desire for future grace – is or should be our motivation for spontaneous and glad obedience, not legalism.
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We agree. The problem is taking something out of context - the preceding two sentences, which point out that lack of free will is a consequence of what you were saying yourself. Restating, each of your posts appears (to me) as axioms which need no, and have no, foundation in Scripture. Lacking that foundation, your alleged axiom that God is always in complete control removes free will from the equation.
One of my more wonderful professors used to say that God gives us headlamps and not spotlights, and told us students not to complain because God is allowing us to see as much as we can handle – and if we could see our actual spiritual state we would despair.
So we should be thankful that we aren’t as knowledgeable as we think we are!
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But the consequences aren’t mere legal ones, the real consequences are ontological.
The legal model seems to make God arbitrary as though He was just making up random rules. That makes things like “The soul that sins shall die” just cruel and unfair; the truth is that it isn’t a legal declaration at all, it’s a cause-effect statement about the existence of souls and the end result of misusing them.
Those are not random.
Go down the six hundred some OT laws and think about them – the vast majority strike people as just arbitrary, i.e. random. And when viewed from a legal standpoint that’s not an unreasonable conclusion – but when viewed from a relational standpoint it’s very different.
There is no way a person having a seizure could be considered responsible for their actions. Your whole scenario fails.
Whether you look at it from the legalistic point of view, or the relational one, it is still a case of how the separation (or guilt) occurred. Original sin claims that we are automatically separated from God from the word go which makes any sort of relationship problematic
However you look at it, Original Sin is fallacious. It overrules God’s creation. It makes man superior to God with the power to undo His work…The alternative would be that God deliberately made us sinful which makes Him no better than those who create a problem just to be able to provide the cure for it.
Richard
Wow – I’m glad you’re not a pastor for anyone I know! That is both callous and shows a serious failure to understand human beings.
- You appear to believe that “a person who has a seizure” can distinguish between “a seizure that they are involuntarily responsible for due to their neurological condition” and “a seizure that a person who is ‘possessed by a demon’ is involuntarily responsible for” and that any Tom, Dick, or Harry themselves can observe the seizure and know the difference.
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I have no idea where the two of you are coming from or how you jump to such ludicrous conclusions.
In general terms, a seizure would be considered involuntary and as such is beyond the control of the person involved so any consequences during a seizure are likewise beyond the responsibility of the person involved.
Now if you wish to declare sin as being outside human responsibility then the whole process of forgiveness for sin loses its integrity. It becomes something mechanical like refueling a car with no moral or religious value.
Sin is an inevitable consequence of creation which God accounted for. It has nothing to do with Adam or any other human being in terms of existence. At best Adam is just the first sinner (except Eve got there 1st and the Devil had been at it for millennia)
Richard
- @St. Roymond,
- “Eve was the first sinner; Adam the second; and the Devil the oldest.” Not bad, the Old Testament summed up in thirteen words.
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Being of Reformed inclination, there’s a distinction between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws (plus dietary and physical), the moral laws being ‘laws of love’, but not exclusively (some of the others could be considered laws of love, for health reasons, for instance). Interestingly, male circumcision is beneficial to both male and female, for both health and pleasure reasons (speaking of relational ; - ). It’s been over half a century since I’ve read it, but this goes into some detail: None of These Diseases (the prohibition of pork, for example, and trichinosis).
And there are more ‘rules’ than that in the New Testament, and they are all ‘laws of love’.
Not according to the insurance company that provided student insurance for that university.
Here’s slightly different situation to ponder: five guys are carrying a piano from a truck to a stage. Halfway to the stage, one of the guys’ muscles give out and he can’t support the piano any longer, so it tilts, so two more guys can’t support it, and the piano crashes down, which ruins the piano and injures the two guys who were determined to try to keep carrying it.
Is it not the fault of the guy whose muscles gave out that the piano is a total loss and two guys are in the hospital?
Show where in scripture this is stated.
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My response was removed. And I am not prepared to improve upon it.
Suffice to say Scripture does not work like that.
Richard
My claim is that the selfish instincts are encoded in the human genome and become biologically transmitted by DNA replication, along with death and illness.
These selfish instincts were of the same type as those at work
These selfish instincts were nullified by the “original grace” God bestowed to the first humans, when God made them in the image of God and ordered them to eternal life.
After the first sin God let humans on earth devoid of “original grace” and, as a consequence, the selfish bodily instincts polluted the spiritual powers and became “inclination to sin”(concupiscence).
Thus, since the first sin, “inclination to sin” (NOT sin!) is biologically transmitted by DNA replication, along with selfish instincts, illness and death,
And where on earth (or Heaven) do you get the idea of Original Grace?
You are convoluting.
There is no more original Grace than there is Original Sin.
Richard
Try this
You will find that sin is so impossible to define that there is no single Biblical definition
The nearest is 1 John 3:4
4Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness
But that is simplistic and probably insufficient.
So my statement stands, on pure logic and observation.
Sin has no substance nor form. It cannot be biologically defined or created by Genetics or any other biological process, nor can it be transmitted that way.
Sin is, just as love is.
Richard
Centuries of Christian thought disagrees, though I suspect that your definition of grace is closer to that of Rome, in which case you have a point. In fact historically “original grace” can be traced back to the third century, well before Augustine warped our thinking with his notion of original sin – IIRC it was one of the eastern Gregories who spoke of the grace given humankind in the Garden, and it may have been him who spoke of the grace God showed Adam and Eve just by walking and talking with them!
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Mightn’t we consider creation itself and us in it as the original grace? The enabling of a familial relationship with our Father and elder Brother, grace upon unending grace (not to mention providence ; - ).
This is magnificent!
Could you please try to remember the Gregory and the quotation about grace?