Christy, I know other Christians have struggled with the idea of ‘degrees of reward’ that God will assign after judging our lives on earth. Where is this reward to be enjoyed–here on earth (in the new Jerusalem?) or in a spirit filled heaven? I presume the ‘saved’ will be cleansed of vices like jealousy (How come he was granted a higher place than I was; I led a better life?) And I cannot stomach the explanation given by past theologians of how those lucky souls ‘saved’ in heaven look upon those unlucky ones damned to hell. This is a quote attributed to Thomas Aquinas: "in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. . .So that they may be urged the more to praise God." Sorry, Tom old boy, you are not describing the heaven I hope to attain.
The Catholic education I was exposed to tended to gloss over this problem. How do evangelical theologians address it?
Al Leo
Jay, you are presenting Francis Collins view on the historical Adam.
The problem with your thesis is that you have death reigning before Adam sinned. That then messes up the whole argument of 1 Corinthians 15 especially the comparisons of the first and second Adam.
Unless you are seeking to argue that the use of ‘dust’ from 1 Corinthians 15:47 is not poetic but real in the sense of the initiation of life from cells - the beginning of evolution in a general sense thus supporting Collins; either way the biblical explanation of death still needs to be addressed as death is incorporated with evolution
Probably by each having their own idea and arguing about who is more biblical.
I don’t think you can be jealous in heaven if sin is done away with forever. Plus, I was taught you offer whatever rewards you get to Jesus in worship anyway, so it’s not like they’re to keep. (That’s where the whole “casting down their golden crowns upon the glassy sea” of Holy Holy Holy comes in)
Personally, I like the idea that the things we do here on earth that are beautiful and loving matter and endure in some form in the new creation. N. T. Wright talks about it some in Surprised By Hope. So, the “reward” for working hard to do good is that those good things last somehow and become part of eternity.
I think I’m just restating what @gbrooks9 said, but every time you see “death” and “die” in 1 Cor 15:21-22, you can easily understand them as a shorthand for the Genesis account, in which context they might mean, respectively, “the loss of an eternal life option” and “lose the possibility of eternal life.” I submit this does no violence either to the text or to the genomic and fossil evidence.
Well put, Christy. Even though I came to it from a slightly different direction (Cradle Catholic-> scientist) I agree wholeheartedly that our humble efforts to do good and create beauty in our earthly lives becomes part of God’s eternity, and not just in the short memories of our survivors. But I cannot help but lose respect for noted ‘theologians’ (e.g. Tertullian, Aquinas) who claim that part of the joys of Heaven is observing the suffering of souls who did not make the grade. Of course, I did not read their original works, and so perhaps I misjudge them.
Al Leo
George, thank you for your response. The question is Adam and 1 Corinthians 15.
The apostle Paul uses the Adam-Christ analogy to show how Christ’s resurrection makes inevitable the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Christ.
The analogy states that “death came through a man.” Paul’s point is that death is inevitable because of our sharing in the humanity and sinfulness of the one man, Adam. But believers’ sharing in the resurrection from the dead through the second Man, Christ, who in his resurrection effected the reversal of the process begun in Adam, is equally inevitable.
In saying that “all die in Adam,” Paul means that this common lot of our humanity is the result of our being “in Adam,” that is, being born of his race and thereby involved in the sin and death that proceeded from him (Rom. 5:12–14, 18–19).
Scripture clearly states that ‘death’ did not exist prior to Adam. Francis Collin’s and Jay (this post’s author) state that God waited until a human evolved then planted a soul - intelligence - etc. But evolution requires millions of years natural selection - death and life to get to that unique point of “soul insertion” where God breathes into the evolved human.
In 1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul continues to explain how the great truth of the one resurrection of Christ affects believers. The convincing analogy comes from the first man: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. The removal of eternal life is saying the same thing.
Just as Adam was the progenitor of everyone who dies, so Christ is the progenitor of everyone who will be raised to life.
In each case, one man doing one act caused the consequences of that act to be applied to every other person identified with him. Those who are identified with Adam—every person who has been born—is subject to death because of Adam’s sinful act. Death in any form did not exist prior to Adam. Evolution requires death via natural selection.
You could say there is a conflict when the bible talks about the talking Donkey. Or that rain is stored in treasure houses… .instead of just condensing in the middle of the sky.
If you are going to let conflicts exist in some parts of the Bible, I think it’s pretty arbitrary that you are going to fret over how death is mentioned in Genesis.
For goodness sake… God tells Adam he will DIE if he eats the fruit. But he clearly does not. That’s a conflict too.
I agree with everything you have posted about being in Christ and being in Adam. But eternal life in Scripture is not presented as a continuation of a present biological reality; it requires a new creation, heavenly bodies that are raised imperishable.(1 Cor 15) In Scripture, Christ is the first fruit of the Resurrection and is pictured as the first human to have an eternal body, not Adam. What biblical support is there for the idea that Adam was created with an immortal physical body? If he was, why was it necessary to forbid him access to the tree of life? (Genesis 3:22) Why didn’t he die physically instantly when he sinned?
How do you argue that no death at all existed prior to Adam’s sin, when life itself requires death? Honestly, this idea is the YEC idea that makes the least sense to me of all. So all carnivores miraculously changed biologically at the moment of Adam’s sin? That is fantastical. God’s creation would not be “good” without balanced food chains. Predators are necessary to maintain the health of the populations of their prey. Some organisms have life spans of less than a day.
Adam and Eve would have been immortal had they not sinned. Genesis 3:22 would have deified them both in a ‘fallen state’ hence the prohibition.
Sin brought death…eventually restrained by God’s grace and the killing of the animals to cover them. Sin brought separation from God. Sin also brought the fall creation. Death was introduced everywhere. It was not present before in any shape or form. Genesis 3 clearly point to the curses and the fall of creation the effects of which we see today.
The new heaven and new earth will deal with our fallen world. Christ’s sacrifice deals with the inherent inborn sin passed from Adam to all -which is the basis of the gospel message - we were born as sinners who sin.
Why would death happen before Adam - because evolution needs it
I was following you (and, indeed, felt we were agreeing with one another) until your last two sentences, which don’t follow logically from what came before. What am I missing? How do you make that leap?
“And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:”
You use the sentence that the verse points out that (Adam & Eve) would have [been] deified “… in a ‘fallen state’ hence the prohibition.”
But if you look at exactly what is the ‘fallen state’ - - it is that they now know the difference from Good and Evil.
Since even Baptists wait until a boy or girl or of mature enough age to “know what is right or wrong” before they baptize, it is odd to think Adam and Eve had some ADDITIONAL CORRUPTION because of the first sin.
In other words, Evangelicals don’t notice that the very criteria that they use to decide who should be baptized is the only thing that actually HAPPENED to Adam and Eve!
.
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All the rest is PUNISHMENT, not corruption. There was no FALL … it was an AWAKENING… the same awakening that our children experience … that makes Baptism FUNCTION.
But what if Adam and Eve had not sinned and their descendants had remained sinless as well? Wouldn’t you have a problem eventually of where to put everybody, not to mention all the animals and microbes? (Henry proposed spaceships to relocate everyone but that is also problematic.)
In Romans Paul affirms that all mankind is naturally under the guilt and power of sin, the reign of death and the inescapable wrath of God. He traces it back to one man Adam, who he describes as our common ancestor in Acts 17:26. Paul as an apostle has given this authoritative interpretation of history recorded in Gen 3., where we find the account of the fall, the original human lapse from God and godliness into sin and lost news. In Genesis, Adam is linked to the Patriarchs and through them to the rest of the genealogy making him as much as part of history as Abraham etc. All the Genesis characters in one way or another and the death of Joseph , like the death of almost everyone else is carefully recorded Gen 50:22-26 hence Paul’s statement “in Adam all die” 1 Cor 15:22 only makes explicit what Genesis 3 already clearly implies. The fall narrative alone gives us a convincing explanation of the perversity of human nature.
This is what makes the concept of Original Blessing more attractive and more believable than the concept of Original Sin. The genetic changes that produced the original Homo sapiens operated somewhat ‘selfishly’ to promote individual survival largely thru instinct. The Great Leap Forward that transformed Brain–>Mind gave humankind a conscience and the choice to operate Unselfishly. Taking an optimistic view of the event, we see it as the chance to become more of an image of our Creator. Taking the pessimistic view, we see it as the choice to refuse the gift and thus to sin.
Al Leo
