Epistemology and Theistic Evolution

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@adamjedgar

@Christy

Christian TEs believe in the Christian God, who is intimately involved with his creation, united himself with it in the Incarnation, defeated sin and death, and rules the world as a resurrected human, Jesus the Christ.

ah see that is an answer that i was wondering if it might pop up.

so then let me ask this…

You as a TE would therefore maintain the belief that the Son of God…whom Trinitarians believe is God, came to this earth as a man and died for our sins.

Now the mere fact that God himself comes to this earth and mixes with his creation, then dies at the hands of his own creation would support the claim that God is intimately interested and intimately interacts with his creation!

Do you not agree therefore with that statement? Obviously from your last post yes.

This means that you also must automatically agree that the reason for the second coming of the messiah is to redeem us sinners to Himself and to restore the fallen creation back to its former glory as it was prior to sin and the fall of man.

Now here is the problem, how then can you possibly claim that Genesis chapters 1-3 are not literal? To make such a claim is to destroy the very foundation of your own claims of belief in the Messiah dying for sin and the restoration of life back to what it was before sin ruined this world.

Take the following verses…

Revelation 21.4 There will be no more death or mourning … crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed … ." He will wipe every tear from their eyes

Are TE’s really going to say that death is only spiritual given that Jesus died a physical death to save us from our sins, and the second coming is clearly a physical event in that the “dead in Christ shall rise first”. If its spiritual, why do the dead need to rise from their earthly graves?

I do not see how it’s possible that TE’s (which has the theist first), can possibly avoid the questions I have asked about sin and salvation in the context of the above points I have made.

Here is another question…
for a TE, what is the purpose of prayer?

These two posts, @Christy’s and @adamjedgar’s, epitomize the now eternal false dichotomy on the epistemological spectrum of Biblical literalism. Hard vs. soft.

On the Why must genesis be literal topic, my answer there encapsulates @adamjedgar’s above;

If you won’t believe that Genesis is the literal truth then you won’t believe in penal substitutionary atonement.

I deliberately used the word won’t, as in the hard literalist mind, that is what soft literalism must lead to. As @adamjedgar demonstrates.

Rightly.

If one takes the soteriology of the NT literally, why not take the Fall literally as that gives a rationale for penal substitutionary atonement, i.e. the defeat of sin? In a completely literal circular argument.

Now I suspect that not all here actually take the soteriology of the NT, i.e. the meaning of Jesus’ accurately reported death, literally. Which is the only possible way out of the false dichotomy.