Paul, Adam, and Salvation: maybe Augustine really did screw everything up and we should just move on

Faith & Science Conversation
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I guess I’ll have to google those links myself then, aye @GJDS?

Frankly, I didn’t think there was a controversy until I got “mugged” over the whole issue.

I thought it was widely and generally understood that the Eastern Orthodox community goes to great lengths to distinguish their views on Sin from those of Rome and those of most Western Evangelical denominations.

Odd … it seems to trigger more agitation than saying Earth was not created in six days. Usually when we bump into something controversial, there is a general obligation to explain why the assertion is incorrectly understood.

But here … what I see is a “rush” to drive me off the boards … and have me invest in months of Blogging and Remedial Reading … so that I may “discover” how wrong I am.

Gentlemen… this is Sin we are discussing. It’s a foundation of Christianity all around the world. It’s not an equation for the half life of Polonium 212.

I’m not saying you have to accept this position. I’m sure there are Eastern Orthodox faithful (especially those who were not born into that particular Faith) who reject that particular plank of the Orthodox doctrine. But to try to tell me that I got it all wrong… after I have provided multiple Orthodox websites that consistently explain the official Orthodox rejection of the Roman view … well, it pretty much ruins much confidence that any other matter connected with Evolution is going to be resolved amongst us.

Don’t you think you should at least TRY to find an Orthodox page that defends Your position? Or does the prospect prove daunting because the Orthodox community is rather well known for their contrary position on Sin compared to the traditional Roman Catholic view?

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It is the season of good will, so in that spirit I will try and respond regarding your insistence on differences between Orthodox and Catholic traditions. When I was 6-7 years old, I recall our local priest explain that we crossed ourselves by bringing three fingers to a point, symbolic of the Trinity. The Catholics, I was correctly told, simply use their hand - how barbaric? I use this example to show how a person, given to conflict, may infer from this the Catholics do not believe in the Trinity, or they are obstinate in not adopting our (correct) mode, or anything else that conflict riddled people may concoct. In fact, it is a variation of an old tradition and means the same thing - we make the sign of the cross!

There are other such examples that can be used by people dedicated to conflict (the most famous refer to, for example, the Pope and Patriarch, the way original sin is expounded, even specific wording on the Trinity). In my experience, every well informed Orthodox Christian can easily see these as arising from matters such as translating Greek into Latin, and other factors, that have little basis in accepting the Gospel. Those not so well informed, take a wiser outlook, in regarding the way Orthodox and Catholic people live, and welcome all those dedicated to the good.

My suggestion was to encourage you to obtain a deeper understanding of Orthodoxy, which will enable you to understand that we tolerate a range of views and encourage dialogue and exchange of views. The foundations of Orthodox Christianity remain the same, and from my reading, are compatible (in may instances, identical) with Catholic teachings.

Now you (as some others) seek to create conflict by saying original sin differs from ancestral sin, and personal responsibility for sin, somehow differs from Catholic teachings. I have tried to show you that both Catholic and Orthodox beliefs are grounded in the Gospel, and Rom7 is a good starting point for a good understanding. From there, you may expand your understanding, and ask questions in some of the sources I suggested - this is to encourage you to obtain a deeper understanding of these Christian traditions, not to drive you out or show your error.

If you are not inclined to follow my suggestion, so be it, but I cannot see this conversation going anywhere, if you dismiss my comments.

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@Jonathan_Burke
Interesting.

We use David Bentley Hart’s book The Story of Christianity with my daughter to supplement her world history curriculum, and we read this passage yesterday:

So I think @Jon_Garvey is correct in that “original guilt” is the issue at hand.

It is my impression that when Evangelicals throw around the term “original sin,” they are not always doing so with any kind of theological precision. I’ve seen people use it as a synonym for “The Fall” (sin entering the world) or just the general idea of broken humanity. Not everyone uses it in the Puritan New England Primer sense of “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”

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Yes, V12 does start with ‘dia touto’ - because of this or “on account of this” It then states:“and thus to all men the death passed, for that all sinned.”

The greek reads in v12 pantes hemarton “all have sinned” is in the aorist tense showing that a completed act was committed. In some way all sinned. It does say “all sinned” not “Adam sinned.”

But the phrase, as you say, “because of this” - does seem out of place until you recognize it as a striking anacoluthon. Because Paul gets diverted with '‘hosper’ - ‘for just as’ and he provides no apodosis. But he gets back on topic in verse 19 again with ‘hosper’ and completes the thought.

V19 for just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many were made righteous."

In Adam we died in Christ we’re reconciled. Both verses are part of Paul’s argument. It is not so much that God holds us responsible for something that Adam did before we were born, but that Adam is the progenitor of us all. In that when we sin we do so with full knowledge of the consequences, just as Adam did.

Thoughts Jonathon?

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I agree with this. Paul is talking about the consequences of individual sin. He’s not saying Adam was the progenitor of us all, nor does his argument require this.

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If Adam is not the progenitor of us all. Then who was?
Did death enter before Adam?

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The universal common ancestor is the progenitor of us all. Yes death entered before Adam. He obviously understood what death was when Good spoke to him, so it clearly existed in his world and he was familiar with it.

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How would you prove your statement?

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I’ve made three statements.

  1. Concerning the universal common ancestor, the evidence is genetic.

  2. Concerning death before Adam, the evidence is genetics and archaeology (not to mention the Biblical text identifying Adam as created mortal and animals as mortal).

  3. Concerning Adam’s understanding of death, the evidence is in the text; God told Adam he would die and Adam clearly understood what that word meant. Eve also understood it.

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Thank you Jon,

  1. This is Francis Collins argument - evolved to a particular state then a soul implanted - that made it human.
  2. Bible states death was explained and understood by Adam & Eve - but it didn’t occur beforehand unless you accept Collins argument and limit death to human death. But then Bible also states creation fell. But as you say genetics and archaeology say otherwise.
  3. Agreed, otherwise Genesis 3 doesn’t make sense
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Ok that’s not my view. I don’t believe in an immortal soul. I don’t believe having a soul makes us human.

I don’t see any passages in the Bible which say the natural process of death didn’t occur before Adam and Eve sinned. Death is a natural process of the created universe. To claim it didn’t exist before Adam and Eve sinned not only presents the huge challenge of the genetic and archaeological record, but also presupposes God initially made a universe which looks nothing like this one, and changed everything after Adam and Eve sinned. The Bible doesn’t indicate this.

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@Paul Allen1

Where does the Bible say “… creation fell…” ? What I can see is that it says Adam and Eve were expelled…which is a very small piece of creation.

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@GJDS

To 1st George from Second George:

I think you misunderstand me. My effort is not to create conflict, but to prevent some parties from “papering over” the differences between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Community… and not on a petty issue either.

Evangelicals and Roman Catholics treat “Original Sin” as a rather complex block of ideas that inevitably trigger other ideas.

The Orthodox Community untangles the mess rather nicely… and apparently in a way that is inconceivable to many Evangelicals.

I am not misconstruing the Orthodox position… I am merely publishing it and reminding people that there is a whole other wing of Christianity that doesn’t use Original Sin as a foundation stone.

As I read your post above, I notice the care with which you employ your wording … and I appreciate your care.

For example, you write that both the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox beliefs are grounded in the Gospel. Oh yes. Absolutely.

But they attain different conclusions, don’t you admit?

Original Sin is a “sacred cow” with which BioLogos supporters must contend daily. The existence of a confessional community that does not use or require this sacred cow is of utmost importance to many under the umbrella.

And, of course, there must be those who share the Roman Catholic view and still don’t find Original Sin to be a barrier to their support for BioLogos.

Since I am a Unitarian, I don’t feel any compelling need to plumb the depths of the Orthodox position. I read their official publications, and I comprehend the differences in viewpoints they are presenting.

The one thing missing in these threads is a quote or analysis for why the Eastern Orthodox positions, as explained, are in error… though there seems to be plenty of innuendo that I have understood their writings incorrectly… without any evidence at all.

The Orthodox position is elegantly simple. The Orthodox apologists state it very simply. Adam and Eve are guilty of their sins. The rest of humanity is guilty of their own sins… but not guilty of what Adam and Eve did. The common link is that all humanity sins… and each is responsible for their own sins.

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Well, George, you keep repeating this. Perhaps one should enquire from the Moscow Patriarchate’s official online catechism as to the range of authoritative views here and here.

Nobody that I can see has said here that the Orthodox view is in error, apart from Jon if his OP implies that the whole concept of original sin derives from a mistaken Augustine, which has been demonstarted to be untrue. Neither is it clear to me what relevance any of this has to BioLogos (let alone in relation to sacred cows), except insosfar as all doctrines of hereditary sin based on Adam as its origin make it harder to deny Adam’s existence.

Once again, i note with admiration your chutzpah in using your Unitarianism to refrain from plumbing Orthodox doctrine (or Catholic or Reformed, for that matter) and yet pontificating on it to those who’ve spent a lifestime studying them from within the traditions. But hey, I guess maybe that teaches me something about Unitarianism theological method.

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Please remember that the original article was written by Hart, and quoted by Enns. Please stop implying I wrote either article. The concept of original sin inherited by later Christianity certainly derives from a mistaken Augustine. I agree with Hart and Enns that Evangelicals have inherited concepts of original sin invented by Augustine, channeled by Calvin. That’s precisely why so many articles can be found on Biologos and other websites in which Evangelicals struggle with the impact of evolution on original sin. Those of us who are unburdened by this doctrine have no such problem.

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@Jon_Garvey

Once Again!! - - those who protest my reportage from Orthodox sites refer to an article… and expect this to be sufficient proof.

Okay… I’ll bite… I’ll go through the articles and try to find what You think is refutation.

But I think the odds are I will l find a sentence that I think refutes your refutation… and we won’t be any further, because you haven’t committed to an analysis of any sentences at all.

You are gambling that these 2 pages are really going to be materially different from the Orthodox pages I have already provided.

Nice gamble. Let’s see what I find. If you want to actually Quote a sentence or paragraph… that will be quite welcome.

George

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@Jonathan_Burke

Now That is a good statement!

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Okay… @Jon_Garvey, I am using the link you personally recommend. Here is the section that I conclude is relevant to your last posting to me:

“CONSEQUENCES OF ADAM’S SIN”
“After Adam and Eve sin spread rapidly throughout the human race. . . . The consequences of the Fall spread to the whole of the human race. This is elucidated by St Paul: ‘Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned’ (Rom.5:12). This text, which formed the Church’s basis of her teaching on ‘original sin’, may be understood in a number of ways: the Greek words ef’ ho pantes hemarton may be translated not only as ‘because all men sinned’ but also ‘in whom [that is, in Adam] all men sinned’. Different readings of the text may produce different understandings of what ‘original sin’ means.”

"If we accept the first translation, this means that each person is responsible for his own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. Here, Adam is merely the prototype of all future sinners, each of whom, in repeating Adam’s sin, bears responsibility only for his own sins. Adam’s sin is not the cause of our sinfulness; we do not participate in his sin and his guilt cannot be passed onto us."

[What about the Other Interpretation?]
“However, if we read the text to mean ‘in whom all have sinned’, this can be understood as the passing on of Adam’s sin to all future generations of people, since human nature has been infected by sin in general. The disposition toward sin became hereditary and responsibility for turning away from God sin universal. As St Cyril of Alexandria states, human nature itself has ‘fallen ill with sin’; thus we all share Adam’s sin as we all share his nature. St Macarius of Egypt speaks of ‘a leaven of evil passions’ and of ‘secret impurity and the abiding darkness of passions’, which have entered into our nature in spite of our original purity. Sin has become so deeply rooted in human nature that not a single descendant of Adam has been spared from a hereditary predisposition toward sin.”

[Old Testament Writers Inclined towards ‘Inheritance’]
"The Old Testament writers had a vivid sense of their inherited sinfulness: ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Ps.51:7). They believed that God ‘visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation’ (Ex.20:5). In the latter words reference is not made to innocent children but to those whose own sinfulness is rooted in the sins of their forefathers."

[CONCLUDING POSITION]
“From a rational point of view, to punish the entire human race for Adam’s sin is an injustice. But not a single Christian dogma has ever been fully comprehended by reason. Religion within the bounds of reason is not religion but naked rationalism, for religion is supra-rational, supra-logical.”

" ‘…As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous… so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom.5:18-21)."

http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/10/1.aspx#25

So, @Jon_Garvey, are you accepting the author’s explicit statement?:

“From a rational point of view, to punish the entire human race for Adam’s sin is an injustice. But not a single Christian dogma has ever been fully comprehended by reason. Religion within the bounds of reason is not religion but naked rationalism, for religion is supra-rational, supra-logical.”

Do we agree that the author is essentially saying: “The idea that humans are guilty of the sins of Adam and Eve makes no sense, but it doesn’t have to make sense to be the word of God.”

If, for some reason, you cannot agree with this statement, why do you expect me to agree? If you DO agree with the statement, then perhaps you have accomplished something very helpful today!

I am interested in this “orthodoxeurope.org” site … and will be reading some more from their pages.

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George, as usual your summary rides roughshod over the nuance that the writer is putting on the sentence. I’ll stick with the nuanced version, thanks, with which I have little quarrel, but which I would seek to subsume more within “reason” rather than just “acceptance” by suggesting the Reformed teaching on federal headship. But it makes no matter - our acceptance of the doctrine as “the word of God” is mutual.

But the point, in the context of the thread, is that the Russian Patriarchate is fully on board with original sin as Orthodox and indispensible, and even goes beyond that to make original guilt an acceptable option within Orthodoxy, subject to the interpretation of Rom 5 (the Greek version, note, from which Reformed arguments are also based, not the Latin which Hart claims to underlie Augustine’s “error”). Thus there is not a gnat’s whisker between that and the Catholic position, and even the most Reformed of the Reformed, the situation I maintained further up the thread.

In that way they seem to be much less down on either Augustine (whom they quote) or Calvin than was D Bentley Hart - but then, he seems to have a distorted view of Calvinism - a view which Peter Enns seems to take even further, in that (unless I misjudge him) he applies his own idisosyncratic total rejection of original sin (about which he has written extensively and controversially) to Hart’s rejection only of Augustinian original guilt. You have to wonder if Enns has read Augustine - or Irenaeus, whose views he says he prefers, but misreading them through the lens of John Hick, in my opinion.

Bottom line (again): do away with original sin, and superficially you can forget about Adam, and perhaps attribute sin to biological evolution (raising a whole bunch of other problems, mind - that’s for another time). But to do so it’s not just Evangelical doctrine you’re undermining, but Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox too, because it’s important to all those traditions.

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@Jon_Garvey:

I agree that the writer, from the Russian view, accepts Original sin. But he is pretty emphatic that it doesn’t make any logical sense. That is why he has to say that Christianity is “supra-logical” - - above human logic.

Since this is not what some of the other Orthodox sources produced, I will have to acknowledge that the Orthodox community is not of one Bloc on the topic of Original Sin and its meaning.

The prudent thing to do is to make a survey of the various Orthodox communities and see how diverse the interpretations can be. Perhaps Russia is the only one, or perhaps my three sources I produced at various times earlier were just coincidentally in agreement.

I’ll get back to you.

Again, I point out that the importance of this general topic is not about “triggering conflict”, but to show that there are legitimate Christian communities of great age that do not agree with the traditional interpretation of Original Sin.