So did Christ – and He entered already slain before the foundation of the world.
Antoine is arguing that causation in terms of eternity cannot be forced to adhere to causation in terms of a linear temporal progression; you’re trying to make eternity bound by temporal progression. But that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world, and that He is firstborn over all Creation, both indicate that time is not definitive when it comes to God.
That verse is incorrectly interpreted quite frequently, getting the relationship between the last clause and the preceding wrong. To illustrate: I was driving along the road yesterday and talking to my dog, and I at one point said, “The tide is really far in, because the river is almost to the road”. My second clause there is not causative, it is explanatory, meaning “Because I see that the river is almost to the road shows me that the tide is really far in, because it takes the tide being really high for the water to get that close to the road”. So also the above verse: it isn’t saying that all men’s sins are the cause of death being passed to all men, it’s saying that just as the water being close to the road was evidence that the tide was in so all men sinning is evidence that death has been passed to all men.
[Darned puppy anyway – he needed attention and now I can’t remember the point that was leading to. Oh, well, maybe it will come back to me.]
That’s an interesting one because the assertion that “God is not omnipotent” is correct if “omnipotent” is meant in the sloppy pop-version of the philosophical definition, i.e. that God is capable of doing whatever thing someone might dream up. The Greek term Pantokrator is less misleading, but in the theological sense both terms are intended to mean that whatever power that exists is God’s. So while “He can do anything He wants” is the sloppy pop version, the real meaning behind “all powerful” is that even the energy used by my fingers to type these words is God’s; as Martin Luther put it once, God is the One Who is energizing every motion/action/thought that exists.
What’s the point there? That God is indeed in one way responsible for sin because He is the One supplying the energy that underlies the temptation and the willing and the action. Thus given that the universe which He created came to contain sin, God was providing the energy for (the possibility of) sin right from the beginning. That’s a scary idea, but it follows from God being the Pantokrator, the “All-Ruler”, the One to whom all power belongs and from Whom all power proceeds.
We tend to take that as limited according to the linear flow of time. Antoine is arguing that from the point of eternity, sin that occurred later than the temporal beginning nevertheless impacted the entire Creation from start to finish. It’s not that shocking a view given that it was the Blood of Christ which served as the foundation for the sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law.
Not just YECism! I heard the phrase “Jesus was never Plan B” from an Orthodox Church in America lecturer just this week! From his explanation that isn’t even a possible thought in Eastern Christology which operates on the principle that if you’re not talking about the one Person of the Incarnate Word you’re not really doing theology – and a universe where it was possible that Jesus “wouldn’t have to die” excludes the Incarnate Word since by definition we are told that the Incarnate Word was and is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
Heh – I knew some rabbis and a couple of E. Orthodox priests who would dispute that. They all essentially adhered to the idea brought up by C. S. Lewis that those animals which are in whatever way connected to us are part of us, so that our Resurrection necessitates theirs.