Agreed on most of this.But my post was why did God chose to show what is sin wit trhoufh death and punishment in the OT rather than love like in the NT?Better putted why do you think
I will be mercifully brief:
FEW PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LIKE THIS ANSWER
- As a UU I would say the answer is - - the Old Testament is Romance/Tragedy/Comic drama… and does not reflect what the Divine really thinks or does… though sometimes the writers get very close to approximating some trutly beautiful principles of the Divine.
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BETTER ANSWER FOR MOST PEOPLE
2) To answer from my formal tuxedo suit of a Trinitarian (I don’t own it, I just borrow it), I would
say the answer is - - this is the most the Divine can do, and we don’t know why.
@Jonathan_Burke has some great essays on this “natural limit to the divine”… along the lines of:
If God can’t make a square circle, is he really God? The answer is, YES, of course.
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ok i have a few questions if you are willing to answer.First if the OT is all romantical etc it disregards the first person of the trinity The Father because it basically tells us that it wasnt the Father that said or did all these thing.Second if it wasnt the Father who was?And third all the prophecies of Jesus in the OT are also in vain
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Interesting issue to get stuck on.
I think it is much more serious that despite the zealous interest in the afterlife that existed in Egypt, Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament argues that Moses had an intense Egyptian experience and yet the Old Testament is (virtually) silent on a general resurrection and the bounties of the afterlife.
There is only one explanation for that problem in my view: and that is after the return from Exile, the temple High Priests (Sadducees) made sure to remove all these references … because it was just TOO PERSIAN!
Or they sincerely thought that only Priestly clans of great righteousness would deserve resurrection into an afterlife.
Eventually, the Enochian school (with the Essene sects) forcefully brought an afterlife into Judaism … and eventually Christianity.
But the bulk of the O.T. has been maimed beyond comprehension!
Well youre here stating that the bulk of the OT
which again theres no proof of it beign maimed.Ive never heard of ressurection to be a core belief of persian culture(well im wrong after a little research i did).You are mixing the bible with pagan beliefs thu raising another question about Jesus divinity .Because if the persians zoroastrianism influenced Christianity (which is what you are assuming i suppose)then it kinda disregards our own faith
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It is my AMATEUR opinion, that if the Old Testament is a valid expression of God’s communicated will about salvation, that scattered throughout the various texts (especially those from Exodus and afterwards), would be numerous references of a general resurrection, or at least a general afterlife.
The Egyptians were QUITE KEEN on it… and the New Testament is too, right?
The Zoroastrian world view was that there was an afterlife that did NOT require continued existence on Earth… but where the righteous crossed a mystical bridge, over a lake or river of molten fire.
Hints of this world view survive in the Judeo-Christian document called:
The History of the Rechabites
The Essenes placed a similar sacred view on natural elements like the Sun, Water, and the Earth (just like the Zoroastrians) … and appears to have been introduced into Jewish religion after Alexander wiped out the Persian royal supports for the Zoroastrian infrastructure. Suddenly, the Magi needed to do a better job of making a living, and they traveled all over making converts OUTSIDE of the Persian gene pool.
Anciently speaking, the two most common references to societies that didn’t have a strong view of the afterlife was:
- the Sadducees; and
- certain Arab tribes encountered by Muhammed who dismissed the afterlife as a fantasy.
The Greeks (frequently influenced by Persian metaphysics) believed death was like a half-wake/half-dream state, with your face pressed into the mud… eternally feeling a gnawing thirst or hunter… if you felt anything.
But the Greek response to this were the mystery religions … which taught that if you knew a few good secrets, you would be able to find the realm of the blessed (Elysium) after death. Interestingly, the source of these mystery religions was frequently described as EGYPTIAN!.. probably because it was easier for a Greek to travel in Egypt than in Persia… prior to Alexander’s arrival.
I think you have wrong facts.The zoroastrian faith was only introduced in the 5th century while the pentach was written at arround 1400 Bc.before the zoroastrian faith So no. It is not influenced.Again i dont get it how can you believe that a pagan faith influenced your own faith,because it gets disregarded…As about the saduceed and such an interesting answer i found out is here 3. The Sadducees | Bible.org
This is the first time I have heard anyone express this idea other than myself. I have certainly advocated this view many times on this forum and elsewhere. I am a strong opponent of equating sin with disobedience, for I think this idea is an artifact of religion reshaped into a tool of power and manipulation. Instead I push the understanding that sin consists of self-destructive habits.
It is not that “eating the fruit” was not a bad thing. I have no doubt this represents something that had negative consequences all by itself (no I do not believe in magical fruit). I just don’t think this is what separated us from God, for don’t believe God is the kind of control freak who cannot have children that do not obey absolutely. Furthermore, history shows that obedience can play a role in some of the worst evils in history (which is not to say that there is no place and time when obedience is good and necessary). But mistakes and disobedience is quite natural and expected behavior in children – even when the consequences are extremely severe. It is part of how we learn. Where the sin and self destructive habits come in is when we refuse to learn from our mistakes.
As for original sin… like I have said before the question is, what is it?
- Simply the first sin.
- Consequences of the first sin with an impact on all mankind?
- Something which makes it impossible for us not to sin.
Since I believe that our humanity is more than just a matter of a biological species, with a beginning between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago, I have no problem with the idea of a first sin. Furthermore, our sins do have an impact upon those who come after us – consequence that all our descendants must live with. So that is a yes to 1 & 2. But to 3 I have to say no in principle even if the consequences of the first sin make it astronomically unlikely that any of us will avoid sin completely.
We learn largely by imitation and so we pick up self-destructive habits. It is only because there are so many of them that complete avoidance is so unlikely. People can and do avoid particular bad habits. The differences between people are many.
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Thank you for the quote from Kierkegaard and the blog. Yes, you are right we are not judged for the sin of others, but the fact is the story of Original Pair and their Sin is the story of the universal human condition. We are all sinners, and the sooner we understand this, accept this, and break the power of sin over us the better.
Science is good and can do many things, but it does not understand sin and fix the human heart. The story of the Fall is not about evolution or science. It is about the human condition. It is about how we became estranged from God, not that God does not love us, but humans fail to trust in God, in others, and themselves.
It is very sad to see the state of the world today, the fear of the virus, conflict in the Middle East, conflict over refugees, anger and fear in the USA and everywhere else, failure to meet the challenge of global warming, etc. It isn’t that no pone4 cares, but too few people seem to care.
There is a huge secret hidden in plain sight in Gen. 3 that we need to see and run with so we can rescue ourselves from the mess we have made.
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Huh? Something is wrong here. Problem with english?
6th century BC is one century BEFORE 5th century BC. So if the Zoroastrian faith was introduced in the 6th century BC and the pentach (The Pentateuch?) written 5th century BC, then the Zoroastrian faith came first.
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Yeah i actually did a mistake .Well in my research the pentach was written 1400 bc arround that while the zoroastrian faith got intorduced in 500bc.I wil change the post above
Your facts are different from mine:
A form of zoroastrianism PRECEDED the formation of the Persian empire.
And Exodus was certainly not in or before the 1400s BCE. Exodus tells us that Hebrew did not go the way of the Philistines, in order to avoid military conflict.
The Philistines were not in the part of the coast until around 1130 BCE. And, in fact, the Philistines were the ones that created the context that is so thoroughly (and unintentionally) documented in the Bible:
After the Hyksos were expelled, Egypt gained hegemony over Canaan, all the way into Northern Syria. The Egyptians taxed, farmed, and hostaged Canaanites at will all during the Amarna period, and right up to Rameses III.
But with the arrival of the defeated Philistines on the coast, they recruited more kinsmen and became strong enough to foment a complete loss of Canaan and Syria from Egyptian control. This is confirmed by the complete lack of couriers, messengers, troops and Egyptian presence in Canaan and Phoenicia … until the time of Solomon, when a Pharaoh allegedly gives Gezer to his daughter as a wedding present.
The only time this chronology works is sometime after 1130 BCE, and after enough time has gone by that all memory of Egyptian rule in that region had faded away.
I think you are jumping to a conclusion here:
The sources describe Zoroastrianism being WRITTEN in the mid-400’s BCE. But it is actually much older than that:
The roots of Zoroastrianism are thought to have emerged from a common prehistoric Indo-Iranian religious system dating back to the early 2nd millennium BCE.[52] The prophet Zoroaster himself, though traditionally dated to the 6th century BCE, is thought by many modern historians to have been a reformer of the polytheistic Iranian religion who lived in the 10th century BCE.[53] Zoroastrianism as a religion was not firmly established until several centuries later.
If you look at the bold text above, “several centuries” after the 900’s BCE would put it right around the time the Persians erupted into an Empire. In fact, this is consistent with the writings of Herodotus:
The Histories is a primary source of information on the early period of the Achaemenid era (648–330 BCE), in particular with respect to the role of the Magi."
“According to Herodotus, the Magi were the sixth tribe of the [Medes] (Medes - Wikipedia) (until the unification of the Persian empire under Cyrus the Great, all Iranians were referred to as “Mede” or “Mada” by the peoples of the Ancient World) and wielded considerable influence at the courts of the Median emperors.[54]”
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Wikipedia although a source its not reliable and will never be.I can edit that article whenever i want changing what is written
And you didnt answer the question of zoroastrianism interceding and overlaping with our faith.Youre making it as if Christianity is a continuation or a branch of zoroastrianism
I am offering my historical perspective as a Unitarian Universalist. I don’t know many people who agree with my views.
But Zoroastrianism appears to have created the messianic wing of the Essenes. And this influenced the Enochians… and all of it influenced the early Jewish Christians.
You can take it from there.
Obviously, the sacred strand of a general resurrection, which is the focus of the New Testament, is not to be robustly discovered in the Old Testament … even though it runs through a big chunk of Egyptian metaphysics.
All cool but i have to take a stand . In the OT Daniel states a russerection idea.You disregrading Christianity with that claim . .Even before the pentauch was written the jewish tradition still held to these stories…the religion was dualistic–meaning that the world view of Zoroaster was a battle between forces of good and evil which the good does not win.That is a major fact and opposed to Christian belief obviously .Plus Judaism is avowedly monotheistic, while Zoroastrianism is dualistic and emerged from polytheism. There is no obvious connection between these religions, but scholars can speculate some connections of they so choose to.
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Plus if you speaking about ancient religion predicting the coming of christ .Here in Greece on some orthodox monasteries we have some ancient prophesies of some oracles that some claim predicted the coming of the saviour of the world.If you read there are strong verses that indicates that .The were called the sibylline Oracles and the writtings about that are still perseved today.Now does it mean that Christianity was influenced by these prophesies?I dont think so
Michele, it is obvious to me that you have given the matter of Original Sin a great deal of careful thought, especially as to how human evolution can enlighten our understanding of it. Like you, I was brought up to define Sin as Moral Culpability; i.e. as one in the same thing. And, as for Culpability, one can surely assign Blame. (from culpare, to blame). Since we all are all morally deficient. to some extent at least, and it seems abhorrent to blame our Creator for this fact, then each of us must accept the blame for our sinfulness. Seems obvious.
But this makes no distinction between a Sin of Commission and a Sin of Omission. There is an old admonition: “Don’t cast your pearls before swine!” My worldview sees God creating life on earth as even simpler than a one cell organism, and establishing evolution as the mechanism that makes complexity and variety inevitable. Theists believe that God must have had a purpose in this: that some creature produced by this variety & complexity eventually would have much of the characteristics of love and empathy that He/She alone possessed. Thus, after a bolide eliminated the dinosaurs, clearing the way for mammals to develop into primates with brains capable of intellgence, the stage was set for the final act: Would this primate line (which we call Homo) use this gift of intellect to rise above its animal instincts to recognize and worship its Creator?
Accepting this gift/challenge was neither obvious nor easy, and the tribes of Homo sapiens scattered around the globe approached it at different times and in different ways. We of the Christian persuasion believe we have gathered the most beautiful ‘pearls’–certainly more so than Buddhists, Muslims, or Jews. But to believe that only those who acknowledge Christ as Savior are rewarded in the afterlife seems like hubris to me. If there is an “Unforgivable Sin”, surely it is wars and killing over differences in religious belief.
To answer your question: I believe morality evolved gradually as the Homo line evolved.
Hoping all the BioLogos family stays well,
Al Leo
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Let me spin out a few more thoughts on original sin before replying to questions.
I left off with the fact that God judges everyone equally on the basis of their own words and deeds. That must include the first humans. God could not judge two people by one standard and everyone else by another without opening himself to the charge of injustice. This applies as much to a literal, historical couple as to a Native American child born 1,000 years ago. No one is condemned for another person’s sin.
The question that immediately comes to mind is: What about infants, or those with mental illness or physical disabilities? Augustine famously formulated his doctrine of original sin as a defense for the necessity of infant baptism. In his view, all children were born sinners and condemned to hell because of biologically inherited sin, unless they had been baptized. Although many Christians believe that, I obviously find it unjust.
Then what is the eternal status of children? In my opinion, the Scripture is ambiguous. No amount of proof-texting will tell us. Reason might help out, as well as our “gut instinct” for fairness. As any parent can testify, children are not innocent, they are ignorant. They do wrong and are self-centered creatures, but we don’t hold it against them because they don’t yet possess the “knowledge of good and evil.” That must be learned. The same is true for those with mental and/or physical disabilities that prevent them from reaching mature personhood. I’ll skip the reasoning and jump straight to the gut instinct: Christ doesn’t sentence the little children to hell. To such belong the kingdom of God. Any just concept of original sin cannot mean it was biologically inherited and therefore rendered a child guilty in God’s eyes. In my view, such a thought is monstrous. My apologies to the sainted doctor.
What I’ve said so far might strike some as Pelagian, but there’s more to original sin than the ultimate fate of a child who dies in infancy. Pelagius, for those who don’t know, disputed with Augustine about original sin. Pelagius denied original sin and argued that children were born “blank slates,” but I don’t believe that’s true.
Sin involves a decision to knowingly violate one’s conscience. Ha’adam was not created with the knowledge of good and evil; he acquired it. Likewise, children are not born with the knowledge of good and evil; they acquire it. We call that process “maturation.”
Sin also requires that one understand the consequences of one’s actions. That’s why society doesn’t put children in jail. Their brains haven’t developed to the point that they can “look into the future” and foresee the consequences of their actions. That’s an adult trait that isn’t completely developed until the age of 25. Children are prisoners of the moment. They are driven by what Augustine would call “concupiscence” – desire. It manifests around the age of 2, when the child begins to form a separate identity apart from the mother. Kids want what they want and they want it now, consequences be damned. Such is the state of childhood.
What’s the source of “concupiscence”? I attribute it to two sources – evolutionary and cultural development, and spiritual.
In evolutionary terms, we had to come from an amoral, animal condition to fully mature human morality. To leap from one to the other is inconceivable. Thus, sin has accompanied humanity on every step of the journey. There had to be an intermediate period that I would label humanity’s “childhood.” And, just like other children, God did not hold these people accountable for their evil acts. Nevertheless, the soil from which we sprang was selfishly amoral, and those roots run deep. The serpent appears without warning in the garden because sin has accompanied us every step on the journey from the amoral to the moral. The serpent is described as one of God’s creatures, which indicates to me a natural origin of humanity’s sinful desires.
The path that we traveled required brain, language, and moral development, and it roughly followed the same path as childhood development. (I describe this in more detail in “Adam’s Evolutionary Journey” Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and Pt. 3.) The cultural aspects include language and morality, but it also involves what is called “systemic sin.” Sin is not only individual, it is corporate. Here’s a short intro to the subject from Scot McKnight’s blog: Rethinking Systemic Sin
Finally, the spiritual aspect derives from the Fall itself, which I argue was an actual event in human history. The consequences listed in Genesis 3 are all anachronisms – pain in childbirth, patriarchy, painful toil of the ground, physical death – except one. If the Fall is to have any “real” consequence, it is spiritual. Humanity was cast from the garden and barred from the presence of God. From that moment on, all of us were spiritually dead, cut off from communication with the living God. Thus, every child is born alienated from God. This isn’t equivalent to being born a sinner doomed to hell, but it does mean we are hostile to God’s will from the start.
I think I answered most questions along the way. I’ll clear up loose ends in a separate post in the morning.
Stay safe!
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