Sorry. If you are responiding to my former rely I think we are so far apart as to be able to reason together.
I am an evidence based person and I belive thare is ample evidence both Biblical and scientific to support the creation, Adam and a Garden of Eden. Adam brought the knowledge of good and evil into the world. Just FYI science does not mage assumptions about the past.
And oral stories are orten based on real events. And check this out. The timing of the Genesis 2 events occording to Ussher, the standart among most Bible thought leaders was around 4000 BCE. Writing and language was well on its way in Mesopoptamia. When Abraham went to Canaan he likely could have cached these stories with him. Alternatvely Canaan could also have carried the. Joseph and Moses were well educated in Egypt and again could have relied on these earlier accounts. It was not until. the time of Ezra and the Yahwists and Priestly writers in 900 BCE and 500 BCE respectively that the existing scriptures were redacted.
Lastly sin is as you say the result of a choice but sin is based on evil, an evil that has been in the world. If God is good and love there must be an evil. Wanting a relationship with man he provided a way for man to be with him. Plan of salvation.
No partb of Godâs plan.
The Bible records Cain, Abel, Seth, and subsequent other sons and daughters (5:4). Beyond that, the details of Adam and Eveâs family are speculation. Yes, there could have been older siblings not mentioned directly in the text. But if we allow that there could have been things not mentioned in the text, then there could have been a large chunk of time between the initial creation of the earth and the creation of humans. The young-earth approach is not consistent, using different rules for judging arguments that seem to fit it than for judging arguments that are a problem for it. If we take the Bible seriously, we need to be careful to interpret it on its own terms, rather than imposing our views on it. As postmodernists rightly point out, this is quite difficult, but they are wrong to take that as an excuse to give up and just go with oneâs own views. We need to carefully distinguish between âtaught by the Bibleâ versus âideas inspired by something in the Bible but not taught in itâ. John Walton uses the metaphors of treating the Bible as a springboard versus as a tether - do we use the Bible to launch off in our own direction, or does it provide restraints on our ideas?
C. S. Lewis, among others, has pointed out that reading authors with very different cultural backgrounds form our own (such as coming from a very different time) provides a valuable check on our views. Not that they are sure to be correct, but they have different biases than we do and so are likely to make different mistakes. For the past few centuries, western thought has been strongly influenced by âEnlightenmentâ appeals to the authority of individual reason. âScienceâ is treated as the top authority. This leads into the error of thinking that the Bible ought to be scientific if itâs really true. True science, the investigation of the physical patterns in creation, is an extremely useful area of knowledge, and we should be very cautious about calling it into question. But people often claim that their own ideas are science, overly simplistic formulae that are not corrected by reference to the actual data. And science is only one area of knowledge; it is not useful for many key questions. The Bible was written in a pre-scientific world. That does not mean that it is scientifically wrong. On the contrary, the world of the Bible is clearly the real world with familiar laws of nature in operation. Miracles are specifically regarded as unusual exceptions to the norm. But the fact that the Bible was written before the development of modern science shows that we are wrong to try to read the Bible as if it were modern science, just as Marxist or Freudian interpretations of works written before Marx or Freud are largely fanciful.
Who was Cain afraid of? The Bible does not say. Thus, we have to admit that any solution involves speculation and is not biblical in the strictest sense of âtaught by the Bibleâ. At best, our answers will be compatible with the Bible. If we take the evidence of genetics, archaeology, and paleontology seriously, we will conclude that there was a larger population of individuals physically matching humans around at the time. But we have no data to determine just what their spiritual status may have been. Humans are inclined to sin and need salvation through the work of Christ. Exactly how each of us gets that status is speculative, as is guessing just how various past hominid populations might fit into the theological picture. Unless we find some relict population of Denisovians or Neanderthals, it doesnât have any practical implications, however.
That is not knowledge. A little child will name things. That name is as meaningful or meaningless as any other.
The fruit was supposed to be the knowledge of good and evil, not the knwledge of scientific or other taxonomy.
Sin involves morality and judgement a, but not so much Godâs reponsive jufegment but the judgementy in th firdt place to make tht action, or say those words. If you are inocent then it means nothing but if you already know what is right and what is wrong, and choose the wriong option, that is sin.
Accprdnt to Genesis God witheld this knoledge from Adam and he then âstoleâ it (took without permission) From then on humanity could sin, but it does not follwo that humanity will always chiise the evil and therefore always sin. A choice is still a choice .
Sin is an option not a certainty or even a habbit. It is, theoretically, possiblt to always make the right chouce. In practtice it would seem to be practically ipossible⌠That is what forgivenss is for. To allow for thise lapses or errors. Forgiveness is not the ultimate soap, that leaves you spotless and then protects you from further transpressions.
Richard
One of the least understood parts of the Creation account; is people âoutsideâ of The Garden. Since Cain traveled away from his parents to find a wife (in Nod) the implication of the text is that there was either a 2nd creation or the 1st creation was more encompassing than the text would indicate.
Some of the confusion can allegedly be settled by The Book of Jubilees but that source although valid is noncanonical.
At any rate; because of the order in which things were written (Mosaic Law and then Genesis), no Cain did not marry his sister as it is alleged. The section of the text which tells of Adam and Eve having additional children occurs âafterâ when Cain departs.
I think that the historical Adam and Eve are the common ancestors of the people spoken of in the Table of Nations which inhabit the Mediterranean area. I think that these people are probably the Near Eastern Neolithic farmers.
I think that theyâre talking about their own ancestors and all of the nations they knew about in the literal sense, making Adam, âthe first manâ to them but that they serve certain theological objectives in the text with Adam meaning humanity and Eve meaning life meaning that theyâre archetypally representing all men and all women and their fall representing all of mankindâs fall from grace.
His status as the first man is literal in that all of the humans the Israelites knew came from him, and theological in that he represented all of mankind as a head. The Bible is God speaking to mankind through the eyes of a specific tribe or family of people, and thus the history found within is of their ancestral history.
Why must there have beenan historical Adam and AEve, especially with such specifically contrived names? Who named them? God?
Trying to make any reality from the Garden story is probklematic at best. The location includes a river that either no longer, or never existed. it includes elements that ae clearly unreal or magical and paints God in a very human light. That God could not forsee the coming disobedience or was unable to prevent it is really insulting God. And for God to throw a wobbly and make such dramatic curses (punishments) is also very human. And the punishments themselves are very human. The whole thing is just beyon reality. Then to claim that Adam in one fell swoop corrupts and ruins Godâs âperfectâ creation is beyond the pale. It is so vane and humanistic I am amazed any rational person would even consider it.
So you are claiming that Scripture was for the whole of mankind from the word gp? A faavoured race? A God who litterally invades and throw out a community for His chosen race? A god who attempts to wipe out a whole race and then condemns Saul for failing to do so? What sort of god are we dealing with here?
The view of God changes from Genesis through to Revelation. God does not reveal HImslef all at once and , as Jesus Humself showed people donât get it straight away, if at all!
You may as well beleive all the stories about Robin Hood! (the exploits of Daveid are very comparable) Scripture even admits to "asigning David tens of thousands! Scripture has to be understood in context. Not only of the time but also of the God it is trying to reveal and how humans have percieved Him and developed their understanding of Him. Claiming the view of God is accurate from Geneis 1 is just burrowing your head in the sands and saying âI donât want to see it!â
Richard
I take Adam and Eve and Genesis 1-11 quasi-historically because I take the scriptures and the genres used in the scriptures seriously. Genesis 1-11 are myth-like stories written as historical narrative. So, I think that they are part history, part myth, that is regional history cloacked in hyperbole, symbolism, the fantastical, and the dreamlike elements of myth. âTheological historyâ as biologos calls it because the point is to teach theology against the corrupted theology of its Ancient Near Eastern neighbors.
And the Garden of Eden is real and we absolutely know where it was. See the video below.
No i didnât watch it. I have no interest in that sort of fantasy. Has someone found the firery sword then?
I noted you said âwasâ. Did it get overgrown due to the fact that Adam was no longer tending it?
I am sorry, but this is beyond a joke!
Quasi History? Is there such a thing? Does there need to be such a thing to get the necesary understanding? If you are trying to justify Original Sin (or even the Fall), forget it. There is no justification in creation.
Richard
Yes, of course, you didnât watch it. I shouldâve expected that. Richard, I donât have any interest in arguing with you, and do you know why? Besides your abrasive way of dealing with those who disagree and hard hearted stubborness in refusing to entertain evidence shown to you as iâve just done, I know that you are not worth my time.
You see, you claim to hear from God, well, so do millions of other people, and the funny thing about them is that they tend to disagree with one another, and their hearing from God can be disproven by objective evidence. I know someone who claims to hear from God who says iâm going to hell because I donât believe the earth is 6000 years old, I follow a specific youtuber who recently had a psychotic breakdown and said that YHWH and Odin had chosen him to found a new religion. Someone else on this forum claims to hear from âmother father Godâ whatever that means.
I donât doubt that these people, and you are hearing from spirits, as there are many spirits in this world willing to speak to the gullable, but they and you are not hearing from the God of the Bible. They and you can be disproven by objective facts. In your case, I know that youâre not hearing from the creator, the God of the Bible because you disregard the Bible. Itâs a no brainer really. You are hearing from evil spirits, demons that are telling you what you want to hear, and I donât have the time to argue with your demons.
Clovis
Same old.
I do not accpet your views so I am hearing from the devil.
So you play tit for tat? Well I guess you could argue that from Scripture if you tried.
Hmm. Abrasive against who? Humanity or stubborn Biblical fanatics? I am not the one claimiing the world is fallen and all humaninty corrupt, except the faithful few!
I am not the one claiming God is either incompetent or negligent.
I am not the one who sses Godc creaitting male and female in Chappter 1 but not realising man needed a female partner. Just as well Adam didnât identify the dog as his best friend and partner. Still, at least he wouldnât have treated Eve like a dogâŚ
You claiim superiority but are as bliind as the next one.
You claim I listen to demons and the Devil bt never have heard me in the pulpit. If you know your Scriture you will know the litmus for the Holy Spirit.
I openly proclaimJesus as Lord and saviour. That good enough? or am I now lyinhg to you! (Must be, I am one of the corrupt!)
I am not the one sending you to Hell, but you can get there yourslef if you try hard enough.
Original Sin is corrupt. Claiming humnanity is corrupt is corruppt. Claiming God lost control of His creation is insulting. Claimming God deliberately made man to fall is insulting. Claiming humainty brought death into this worl is naive and insulting to God.
Can I be any more abrasive to you? (probably)
Scripture is sacred and sacrisanct but it is not what you claiim it to be. I am always amazed how people canspend a lig=fe time studyig Scripture and get it so wrong!
Still, beleive what you want (about me as well) God is my witness and judge not you.
Richard
Not really a fantasy but informed speculation. Michael Jones is pointing to a possible location of Eden in the now flooded Persian Gulf. Which is also where I think the flood story originated when the area was flooded due to rising sea levels.
Speculation that assumes it existed in the first place. Sorry, I do not. There is no reality in the Garden story, but, then again, that is not its purpose.
Richard
I am not saying the entire story is literally true, but there has to be at least some elements that match reality or the audience is not going to understand the author. One of those elements might have been a cultural memory of living in a fertile area that they were forced to leave due to rising water.
But, on this occasion it is not the audiance that dictates. The Garden story would be entrenched in the minds of those of the day. What it meant to them may well differ from what we understand now.
The garden story has been paert of both Judaism and the Christian Bible since the start, it therefore hads meaning. However, the Doctrine of Original Sinand supplemental views of humanty did not arive until Saint Augustine and was made even harsher by the reformation.
I was brought up with the Methoodist Mantra
All need to be saved
All can be saved
All can be saved to the utmost.
Much of it was in answer to Calvinâs predestination but the notion of all being sinful was accepted and encouraged.
However,
More recent theology has started to shy away from Original Sin, partly due to the two Prophecies in Jeremiah and Eekiel that catagorically deny it, and partly due to the way it views God. The whole notiom that God could neither see nor prevent Adam (& Eve) from eating the fruit is abominable The alternative view that God deliberately made man fall so as to provide the reason for Jesus is even worse.
.
Yes, probalby, all sin, but not deligerately or under the influence ofthe Devil or Sin.It is just almost impossible not to.
The point being that all this exclusivity and Christian only Salvation is as non PC as any other sort of descrimination or exclusion. Eceumnenacalism is not only within Christianity , but also reaching out to the other main religions. Both the crusades and the Muslim fanatic attempts to attack Christianity have been condemened as wrong.
For a start if Paul had been trying to endorse or even create the Doctrine he would have written more than two passing verses on it, so taking those two verses is clearly misrepresenting Paul
Secind, reality does not show that the world is titally corrupt apart from proffessing Christians. It is just plain wrong, therefore a rethink is necessary.
Furthermore, modern society is less keen to accept âmagicâ as real, or speaking annimals.
The Gardenstory denstrates that we need to be culpable and hones about our mistakes or âsinsâ. Christian doctrine cliams that if you do not admit that something is wrong God cannot forgive it. Whether that too is belittleing Christâs actions is still a hot bed of controversyâŚ
What is clear from Scripture is that it is the thought rather than the action that matters (a expressed above) God forgives actions (sins) He is much less tolerannt of deciet or willful evil. The net result being that there is a very large proportion of humanity that âtryâ and have the right intent, regardless of their belief in God. Ti claim them as deraved, or corrupt, or even fallen is a grossinsult and inaccuracy.
There has always been a window available for the non beleiver who only understands at the final judgement. It is time Cristianity stopped jumping the gun and condemening them before they get there.
Richard
This is why the best biblical scholars make the effort to remind people that the scriptures were not written to us â they are in effect other peopleâs mail we are privileged to look in on, and since they are other peopleâs mail they have to be read from the perspective of those people or we will never have a clue what they are actually about. Only when we do that can they be for us!
Or whether he got blisters, caught diarrhea from working with animals closely, had bad dreams, etc.
Or as my forestry professor rephrased it, missing the trees for the moss.
So God planned for us to sin? All the rebellion and resultant suffering was on purpose?
That misses the point of Eden being a place where heaven and earth overlapped, where YHWH-Elohim could dwell with His two families together (or rather they with Him).
Sometimes. Sin is often because people think they are doing good.
There you go passing judgment on Paul again.
This rings a bell with something I came across in a theology journal: that âthe knowledge of good and evilâ being experiential rather than cognitive (given the Hebrew verb involved) and therefor wasnât about being able to say, âOh, thatâs good, but thatâs evilâ but to define for ourselves what counts as good and what counts as evil â with the opportunity at least sometimes to find out that what we thought was good wasnât (e.g. downing three fifths of bourbon in an evening).
Iâve seen that shared on the web frequently, and it always makes me smile.
There is no error in what he wrote â youâre seeing things that arenât there.
It doesnât require any pretending, itâs consistent with the shift in literary type.
Itâs impossible to do any theology without taking a position on the genre of the text â the problem is that you assume that it is the genre it looks like to you, in English, without any actual education sufficient to determine what genre it might be.
If you understood scripture at all you would know that nothing in Genesis 1 - 11 needs to be history for it to be true â which is to say that you are clueless about the biblical worldview.
No one is âthrowing out the evidenceâ: the argument is like one over whether something is a shopping list or a recipe.
That you canât tell the difference between seeking and âtwistingâ is truly sad. Your position is like saying that a detective shouldnât dig up evidence!
Worth noting: the first imperative in the chapter occurs in verse 19, which means that none of what came before qualifies as a command â in fact the one in verse 19 is the only imperative in the chapter!
Is completely accurate. Just as an example, take the imperfect tense in Hebrew: with regard to the word for âgoâ, in the basic (qal) imperfect it can mean âhe wentâ, âhe will have goneâ, or âhe will goâ. This is true of all Hebrew verbs, and that is just the beginning of the impreciseness. One result: in Exodus 20:9 it could read âYou laboredâ, âYou will have laboredâ, or âYou will laborâ (none of them is a command, BTW).
Iâve watched it. It has absolutely no bearing on what you said above â youâre making a double category error: Wallace is making the case that we can have confidence in the text of the New Testament writings, while youâre saying they can be translated precisely; Wallace is talking about the New Testament canon, youâre applying it to the Old Testament.
I ignore most of it because:
- often the verses you list arenât even relevant to the point youâre responding to
- you interpret references according to a MSWV
- you use sources that are outdated in terms of scholarship
Those are my only reasons.
No, because Paul doesnât say it.
Paul does not anthropomorphise sin. He claims we can be slaves to sin, tut that is not the same thing and is more along the lines of Mitchelâs bad habits. The trouble is that you universalise it.
Just because Paul thought he was a slave does not mean that he thought all were slaves, besides you know his views on self will and God. I trust you do not align with them.
The fact is people are not slaves to sin, or unable not to sin. Jesus said as much. Are you putitng Paull above Christ?
Richard
Read ephesians 1; 4-10. Why is salvation needed if there is no sin? Sin had to come through someone. If not Adam, who?
Sin has no form yes. it is a product of evil against Godâs authority. See dictionay definition. You do not need the Bible for that one but that is aso what the Bible says.
Yes, I am adding a reality to the Garden story.
Who is talking about salvation?
Christâs death was for the forgivenss of sins, not to promote salvation.
Sins do not condemn us to Hell, Actions neither send us to Heaven or Hell. Canât you understand this!
STop confusing forgiveness with salvation, they are related but not interchangeble. God can forgve sins (action( and still condemn the thought or intent, That is where salvation lies. Ypu can beleive in forgiveness all you like but if you are still deliberately sinning there is something else wrong.
On the flip side, if your intent is basically good then that is what God wants, not meningiess piety or religious dogma.
Richard