Looking for your theological assessment of these verses in my post to you above:
The Bible makes it clear that mortal man doesn’t have immortality. “God alone is immortal“, 1 Tim.6:15-16
“. . . the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only [alone] hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto…”
Those who seek immortality will get it, Rom.2:6-7:
"Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life. . . "
Jesus brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, 2 Tim.1:10.
“But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…”
1 Cor 15 discusses the spirit and resurrection, but doesn’t quite equate the spirit to a soul, or equate resurrection with immortality:
1Co 15:42-44
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.”
But if we take this text with the other texts, can’t we confidently say that while the soul might not be inherently immortal, the appearance of Jesus gives immortality to the believers?
Anti-Semitism was a longstanding component of Christian tradition, in both East and West. It never completely died out. The Roman Catholic church didn’t disavow it until Vatican 2.
Where did you get the idea that it was only the ignorant and savage who dismissed Catholicism? Protestant objections to and attacks on Roman Catholicism – including objections by church leaders, theologians and clerics – were centered on Roman Catholic doctrine, not on the fact that they were outsiders. The Westminster Confession of Faith was not some work by ignorant rabble; it was a product of leading Protestant thinkers, and has been highly influential, officially and unofficially, in Reformed churches down to the present. (American Presbyterians, for example, only dropped the statement about the Pope being Antichrist in 1903.) Their attacks on Catholicism were not expressions of ignorant hatred; they were attempts to keep the church safe from what they viewed dangerous false doctrines.
You disagree with their judgment. Great – so do I. What I don’t get is what basis you have for dismissing this long-standing, sincere and biblically based teaching – that RC doctrine is dangerous and even diabolical – as the product of ignorance, while objecting to evangelicals who want to modify the long-standing, sincere and biblically based teaching of monogenism on the grounds that it too was a product of ignorance.[quote=“Eddie, post:162, topic:5657”]
Yes, you have – by implication. If you agreed that these and many other doctrines were held in common by a wide range of major churches, you would not have objected to my original point; I therefore inferred that you denied the existence of such common doctrines. But if I’m wrong, if you accept these large overlaps, then it’s not clear to me what your beef is with my original statement.
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I made no such implication. My beef with your original statement was that it implied that a traditional teaching shouldn’t be discarded because it was traditional, when in fact Protestants have felt free to discard many traditional teachings. Where did I suggest that Protestants discarded all traditional doctrine?
Exactly. You’ve stated the broad idea that was preserved in most evangelical traditions, and ignored the very important part – the necessity of baptism for salvation – that they rejected. But when an evangelical wants to preserve the idea of a historical Adam responsible for the Fall while rejecting monogenism, you start promoting the sanctity of tradition – even though there’s far less at stake with monogenism than with baptism.
You’ve thoroughly misunderstood the situation. I have no problem with tradition and with those who embrace tradition as a source of truth. I may not agree with them, but they’re being consistent. What I am objecting to is your inconsistent embrace of tradition: it’s to be followed by evangelicals when it’s a tradition you favor, but can safely be ignored when it’s a tradition you’ve rejected.
Has it not always been thus? What internal, theological pressure was there to even posit, let alone accept, heliocentrism, common ancestry and the like? At least with population genetics, there is the longstanding internal evidence that is strongly suggestive of Adam and Eve’s family not being the only humans around.
Very well said. The exegetical crux of Cain’s wife was caused by a specific reading of Genesis 1 which creates a contradiction with Genesis 4. That is very good reason for challenging that reading of Genesis 1.
Voila! It is as you say! The story of Adam and Eve works because of its bearing on a self-aware hominid suddenly encountering moral agency and moral dilemmas. It has nothing to do with whether or not we are biologically descending from the first morally aware humans!
Tradition is another way of speaking of accumulated wisdom by any community - so as a general remark you are correct. Theological teachings found in all denominations are often the product of communal outlooks and beliefs, and these are very much influenced by those that founded that tradition. Within the Church, from the early days, it became apparent that the Christian faith espoused many who wanted to teach their own version of the Faith - I have wondered as to why this has been so, but reading historical documents/books has convinced me this is so. It was determined that the Church needed an authoritative approach to ensure the beliefs and practices remained centred on Apostolic teachings and the result has been Orthodoxy, which from what I understand, every major tradition has accepted, albeit certain practices have been modified or in some cases abandoned.
I think this approach needs to be continued, or adopted, for the Christian faith to be articulated with clarity, and more importantly, to be understood by all Christians. It is within this context that science and philosophy should be brought in to add to our understanding, but not to become substitutes for sound orthodox theology.
I understand it is easy for us to make suggestions such as the one I am making, but very difficult to put into practice when we consider the various organisations and their internal culture and particular tradition. When we add the political and ideological differences that had caused such acrimony amongst nations and state religious institutions over the past centuries, the difficulties grow exponentially - one may wonder how we still have a Christian Church these days.
So, to perhaps make a useful comment on evolution, monogenesis, Adam and Eve - it may be wise to consider the overall status of Christian denominations, and place ToE within this larger context - as you say, there is less at stake, and science of every discipline overall will eventually be accepted by Christians, as it has been for many centuries. The down side is seeking aspects of ToE for the sake of disagreement and cultural warfare - I cannot believe ToE can be so important that groups need to go at each other over it.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we are getting more data all the time. As a case in point, here are 3 new massive genetic studies that all come to the same general conclusion, that all non-Africans can trace our ancestry back to a single dispersal from Africa. There were likely more out of Africa migrations prior to the one that all of today’s peoples are descended from, but only one study picked up a small signal of gene flow from an earlier migratory population. More relevant to this discussion though is that there is nearly 800 new genomes and more genetic diversity unveiled that was not seen in the 1000 Genomes data. This is stated explicitly in the paper lead by Reich and colleagues. As sequencing becomes cheaper and easier I suspect more diversity will be uncovered, which will give increasing problems for the Adam and Eve as sole progenitors hypothesis. Anyway, this is a massive amount of data with many layers of complexity within it. If @DennisVenema has any time to make some of it more transparent that would be great. If not I understand. However, this Carl Zimmer article provides a good summary and has links to all three studies that will get you past the paywall if you want to look at the data yourself.
I suppose I may be pouring cold water on such enthusiasm, and I again emphasise that my remarks are focussed on what can and cannot be deduced from modelling pop genetics and genetic variation - so to add this: Very recent genetic analysis of Australian aborigines indicates that they are all descended from a small group (bottleneck) situated in Northern Australia, and these are similar to Paua new-Guinea (although there is some argumentation on Western Australian populations). This study concluded these were descended 20-40,000 years ago, and required a land bridge to the continent, to ensure some commonality with Papua new-Guinea natives. The person who reported this publicly, went out of his way to say there will be disputes and other opinions on this matter.
Notice again, assumptions of bottlenecks, land bridges, migrations, none of which are hard data, but need to be built into the model to make it work.
This is not to suggest it is bogus science, but it does show that we need to curb some over-enthusiastic and dogmatic assertions made on this subject.
Hello GJDS, my main point of the post was not that the models discussed in the papers are perfect, they most certainly are not. Rather, it is to show that through more sequencing, deeper yet levels of genetic diversity are being discovered, particularity in Australian Aborigines and Africans. It seems you are not convinced at this point that modeling in population genetics is reliable enough to determine effective population sizes of the past. I agree that it is not 100% solid and the numbers may fluctuate a bit, but I do see the evidence trending in a certain direction and expect it will continue to do so. Although, I could be wrong. Also, I thought they were intrinsically interesting papers that people on this thread may like to see.
The modelling is just that, and I too agree they may prove useful to workers in this field - my contention deals more with appearing to claim that we can now use such models to provide an alternate narrative on Biblical matters, such as (on another thread) “original sin”, just to mention one area of Christian doctrine. If we need to make so many assumptions to make any model appear to be reliable, we are on shaky ground. Just to give another example, I tried to discuss one paper that claimed to show how species were geographically isolated and then branched of - at no point could this paper (or anyone who made comments) show any data, (or so called evidence) that events took place that led to geographical isolation - they simply stated it must have.
Models lack scientific credibility if they assume something is so, and when questioned, they change and say it must be so because of the model. If this is the approach, the model is suspect.
Likewise, when I ask for direct data to substantiate that a particular community formed a bottleneck, the polite responses simply say they must have. Again, this is an assumption. If the Australian native were not linked to Papua - then this models fails - it is inappropriate to claim it is valid when any of its assumptions cannot be based on clear data.
My remarks are pretty standard stuff for any simulations and modelling in any reputable science - if workers need to make assumptions, they make that clear, and admit to possible failing in their model - again standard stuff in science. I am surprised that at times (not your response) my remarks would cause such angst and aggressive responses from some quarters.