So is Adam awaiting the Resurrection?
The breath of life is not simply bringing one to life?
The tree of Life was not an actual tree bearing fruit that made the eater undying?
Adam was created immortal?
What of those outside the garden? Were they born immortal or born to die?
Iām going to give Joshua Swamidass a chance to help answer my problems. Bill Craig too. If they canāt help me, Iām outta luck until God brings the answers to me Himself.
Heiser and Walton didnāt help. They just told me the Bible wasnāt meant to be understood by me. Itās by the Israelites, for the Israelites. No actual, real God required.
Yes. The spirit is dead. The tragedy is because of the fall, with that inheritance through Adam also came an inheritance of self-destructive habits and thus the hope of spiritual life with God was lost and mankind required redemption.
Not the chemical biological life of the body which is no different than any plant and animal, but the much much greater life of the human mind by which we would be children of God. The Bible doesnāt speak of God breathing life into the plants and animals, and the plain fact of the matter is that there is no stuff which can be added to inanimate matter to make it alive. They are alive because of their material composition and chemical processes.
No. And the āsnakeā was not a talking animal like in Walt Disneyās āRobin Hood.ā The snake was the angel Lucifer who became our adversary from the fall.
The body of Adam was constructed of dust (i.e. the stuff of the Earth). The Bible says so. Paul explains quite clearly in 1 Cor 15 that this body of dust is perishable, and it is the spiritual body which is imperishable, and only because of a relationship with God in the resurrection. In the Bible, āimmortalityā only ever applied to God, who is the life-giving spirit. The notion of an immortal soul comes from the pagans and the Gnostics, not the Bible.
The Bible never speaks of people āoutside the garden.ā The Bible speaks of an Earth filled with people whom Cain fears if he is made to wander. Adam and the other homo sapiens on the planet were physically the same. The only difference is that God spoke to Adam giving the inspiration which brought the human mind to life. All the other homo sapiens were thus no different from children awaiting this inspiration of God to spread over the whole Earth.
back to your OPā¦
Correctā¦ but I think we know more than this even. That although there was likely a population bottleneck around 150,000 years ago, it was still a sizable population around 10,000 individual. Trying to push it back even further and they were not even recognizably human and evidence tells us that those populations were greater not smaller.
Orā¦ our humanity is more than just a biological species.
An Adam and Eve much farther back in time than 10,000 would reduce their significance to human history and civilizationā¦ as if they had nothing of importance to contribute. If 100,000 year ago, then for a period of 9 times that of human history Adam and Eve had no great impact on our species at all. I donāt think that is right. It makes more sense to take the Biblical account more seriously which places them 6,000-10,000 years ago.
Yes. I agree. The Bible does not speak of the āimage of Godā as a thing. It only says man was created in His image. It doesnāt even say that other living things were not created in His image. The distinction was only that man was āvery goodā while all the rest was only āgood.ā And thus we can even take this to be a very good image of God as opposed to only a good image of God. After all we know from science that animals share many of our capabilities.
If there is a sharp line then it is only language ā communication with all the representational capabilities to rival and even surpass that of DNA which was the basis for a life of the human mind with its own needs and inheritance.
This is not correct. God and angels often had nothing like a human form when they appeared to people. They were often very frightening and terrible.
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When I get frustrated with theologians who think they have it right I remind myself: Space-time was created with our universe. Anything described as eternal, a person, a place or state, is outside of space-time and such descriptions should never be taken literally. How can one, using any human language, describe persons for whom there is no before or after? All descriptions of anything eternal, even though inspired by God, are not literally true. They are emotionally true. How we react to those descriptions is how we will react when we are able to see the reality. Herbā¦
But the Bible doesnāt say God produced those Himself, He only commanded the Earth to bring them forth. With Adam, it specifically states that God did the creating there. Of course the breath of life would had to have been given in the process.
In this we agree!
But nothing is more tragic than when a child dies. They donāt understand. They are innocent.
We may be MORE than a species, but we still ARE species, with regional sub-species (maybe wrong word, but it applies to zoology easily enough, why not with us?) and all to consider.
That still leaves the problem of VERY Human-behaving hominids, and the Neanderthals especially. And it would simply be racist to state they were not Human, when we could breed with them. I mean, have you SEEN the difference between a European and a tribal African??
See above for problems with image-bearers dying outside Eden.
In this too, we agree.
Donāt even get me started on timelessness! Lol. Itās simply impossible for my mind to comprehend such a state. I donāt believe in it.
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Really? In the New Testament, Paul speaks repeatedly about āeternal lifeā in Christ - eternal life of what?
What if āin the image of Godā means that man was created to be the spokes person for God in the place of pagan images/idols? Of course that would require language on the part of mankind. When was language evolved? Oh wait, John says āIn the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.ā So did those outside of Eden in their caves speak perfect King James English too?
You bind God with time, limiting him in his sovereignty and providence. Getting your head around Godās inscrutability with respect to time isnāt something you should plan on. That does not mean you should not believe it.
Do you comprehend how a man rose from the dead? Yet you believe it, not limiting God in that way.
Well, the correct word would be everlasting. Only after dying and being resurrected, one would not have to die again.
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Oh, I can totally see how the source of life can return it to a body they created in the first place.
I cannot see how a period of timelessness could possibly, reasonably or rationally exist before or after an event occurs. That is a major objection to a timeless God. A timeless God would simply not exist. For if He even scratched His metaphorical eyebrow, thereād instantly be a time before and after He did the scratching. I accept this is one problem Humans cannot possibly solve.
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You donāt know the scriptures that contradict you. Huh.
With your claim that there is absolute time that God has to exist in and be constrained by then you are denying both of these:
A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:4
And
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 Peter 3:8
Iām not going to argue about time in relation to God. To do so is above my dimensional paygradeā¦
I understand Bill Craig spent a Decade on the subject. Maybe Iāll read his book some time. Once Iāve solved my current focus issues.
Thatās wise of you. You might however marvel and worship about Godās sovereignty over it by contemplating his works of providence. There is quite a bit posted about it. One place is here, another here (an especially fun example in my life) ā¦and both above that post and below it as well.
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If you believe God has always existed, had no beginning, you have made the first step toward believing in a timeless exisistance.
It doesnāt use the word āproducedā for man either. It doesnāt say any living things are a product of design, and I think being designed is inconsistent with what it means for something to be alive. Living things are a product of growth and learning, and if anything this is even more true of human beings. The God of the Bible is a shepherd not a watchmaker ā the latter idea comes from Deism.
Why? Why this difference in the case of human beings?
It is because it is not speaking of chemical biological life. It is speaking of the life of the human mind, and the divine breath is inspiration.
No if we are more than a species, then it takes more than just biology and DNA to make us human.
What problem? What behaviors do you imagine make us human?
I agree with including the Neanderthals in the biological species of humans. I do not agree this justifies your automatic exclusion of the idea that humanity consists of more than just a biological species in something which happens after the two subspecies merged together.
See above refutation of the treatment of āimage of Godā as a thing which anyone has. This theological terminology is not in the Bible.
God creating in His own image means His intention is a relationship with children. But that relationship with Adam and Eve failed. So this effort of God continues by calling us to seek recreation conformed to the image of His Son, which is only fulfilled in a relationship with God.
Indeed! This theological notion is a product of antiquated thinking (absolute time) which science has already rejected. Just because God is not a part of the space-time structure of the physical universe doesnāt mean that God is incapable of any temporal ordering of His own.
Eternal life is a relationship with God because there is no end to what He has to give to us and no end to what we can receive from Him. To be sure, Paul explains in 1 Cor 15 that unlike the physical body the resurrected spiritual body is imperishable. But it is a mistake to equate the eternal life promised by Jesus with the immortality of vampires. It is not just about never-ending existence which is too likely to be hell without anything to make that existence worthwhile. Jesus also says that some can expect eternal torment ā so equating the ultimate hope with never-ending existence doesnāt make any sense at all. Life is more than just existence. Life is growth and learning.
Deism was one of my stops along the path from agnosticism to theism. It helped when I had no answer for the question of suffering.
Still disagree. I think it is simply the act of bringing something to life. In fact, Adamās creation seems to me like a de novo act. I donāt like it, but the text really seems to be demanding that Adam was specially created, apart from the others and then moved into the garden. Of course, this then begs the question, why then have others outside at all, and why have the Earth produce them?
Too many similarities with other animals to claim we have anything more than they do, except the image, whatever that is. The Bible itself states we have no advantage over the animals.
I still maintain the image must be what separates us from the animals.
Iām not sure, but I am committed to my belief that man has no ghostly soul or anything within them that survives death. My only problem with my own belief here is that I cannot explain how God is going to resurrect me, without that new me being a clone.
So the image means that we are His children? In the sense my children are in my image, because they are mine biologically? But God, not having a bodyā¦ You may be onto something there, but I still reject a soul within us. And I do not understand what spiritual life is. What it feels like, manifests as, or if I have ever had it. I feel fully physical.
It is more often the stop along the path from theism to atheism. That is certainly the path my father took with the conclusion that such a god is irrelevant to the living of our lives.
I donāt believe in anything put into the body to make it alive or a person. Thus I reject the puppet dualism based on the mental soul of the Gnostics. But both Paul and Jesus did teach that we have something which survives death. Paul called it the spiritual body which is brought to life in the resurrection. The difference is Paulās teaching that the physical body comes first and the spiritual body grows from that like a plant from a seed. And I donāt think this spiritual body has any part of the space-time structure of the physical universe.
The Bible says no such thing. And there is only one important difference: language. And by language I mean a system of communication with representational capabilities which surpass that of DNA. The result is that human language can be the basis for a life all of its own ā and that living organism is the human mind. Nowā¦ I donāt have any problem with the idea of other species in the universe having language. I would be delighted to find this is the case. And I believe in an infinite God, big enough for relationships with an infinite number of such other people. But so far, we havenāt found any.
However, let me clarify: the human mind is a physical living organism and not to be confused with anything spiritual.
I agree that this way of thinking is highly problematic and I would toss the whole idea of an historical Adam and Eve before accepted anything like that. But I donāt think the text demands any such thing. I certainly donāt believe in a necromancer god creating golems of dust and bone any more than I believe in magical fruit and talking animals. God created our bodies from the stuff of the earth according to the laws of nature and science is revealing the process by which this happened. Then God spoke to Adam providing the inspiration which brought the human mind to life. That is a meaning of the text I can accept.
That is the first time I have encountered such. Do you have a problem with the teaching of the Bible that God is spirit? Do you not believe we can have a relationship with this spiritual being?
Iām trying to avoid that.
We become alive again at the Resurrection. But we donāt survive death. We die and we stay that way until the Resurrection. Death is a punishment. We arenāt going to be consciously chilling out somewhere waiting until we come back to life. That isnāt death. Death is the opposite of life. There is no life in death.
Ecclesiastes 3:19-22
We agree on this.
Still not down with this.
I have a problem understanding any life within me other than plain and simple life. There is no spirit within me. I have no soul. But I am a living soul. A fully physical entity.
I can comprehend a spirit entity, to some extent. But that is not what I am.
The problem with this, is thinking that the resurrection is a physical event in the space-time structure of the physical universe. I certainly donāt believe that. The resurrection is not a zombie apocalypse of bodies climbing out of graves. But if it is not in the space-time structure then it is nonsensical to talk about remaining dead until the resurrection.
No. Death is simply the absence of life, which is a consequence of being without the necessary requirements. For physical life the necessities are chemical, but for spiritual life all you need is a relationship with God who is the ultimate source of all life.
Taken out of context.
Ecc 3:19 For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. 21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?
The purpose here is only to say that we have no advantages over animals when it comes to death. Death is not a punishment for us any more than it is a punishment for the animals. It is simply the other side of life, as night is the other side of day. We have no advantage in a āsoulā different from the animals to escape death ā but it says quite clearly both have a spiritual existence which continues after death.
Indeed that spiritual existence is the whole point ā the purpose for which the physical universe was created. The physical universe is like the womb, providing the needs for the growth of an infant in preparation for an existence outside the womb. Likewise we are made for a relationship with a God who is spirit, thus Paul explains that we have a spiritual body to be resurrected for that relationship.
Spiritual life is in a relationship with God. That life is not within you but in God. And the spirit is not a part of the space-time structure of the universe, so yeah, it is not inside you, but exists outside of space and time. What is here and now is a physical entity. But that is not the whole of reality.