The Fall and the Crucifixion

Faith & Science Conversation
, , ,
1

Hello again, I wanted to make a post because I’ve been reading plenty of past forums regarding the topics on the Fall and the atonement of Jesus on the cross, but I’m finding it difficult to fit the puzzle together.

If we recognize that “humans” died before the Fall, then many of us here would recognize that if a historical Adam and Eve existed, their death due to their actions was likely a spiritual death, unless the effects of the garden granted them potential immortality. A spiritual death also makes sense if you view the A and E story as about temple cosmology: God creating a representative of the human race to be his image bearers ( in a functional sense) to the eventual whole world. But they failed that and so they were cast out of God’s (direct?) presence.

In Jesus, one of the most critical images that comes from the Gospel writers is the last Supper and Holy week which echoes the Passover all over the place. I know it’s a mixed bag whether or not you’ve heard about Jesus being the Passover Lamb but it’s one of the best images in the Gospels to understand Jesus’ death and it’s atonement. Romans 5:23 states that the wages of sin is death, but a better way to look at that is the natural consequences of the choices to do sin, to decreate and cause chaos is death. We do not pay anyone with our lives but rather its what we get paid. At Passover in Exodus, God gives both the Egyptians and Israelites over to the power of death with the final plague. However he gives anyone the chance to avoid it by offering up a blameless lamb and having it’s blood over the doorpost. This blameless lamb has not sinned or done anything wrong, so when the death passed over the door post with the blood, it (Death) realized that it has no claim over that life and it moves on. I think it’s pretty easy to see how this leads to Jesus. Jesus was a blameless person and he offered his life on the cross to show that death had no claim for him. Yes, it’s substitutionary but not penal atonement. God wasn’t paying Death off, but rather showing death that he had no claim on Jesus. So that if we die with Christ (see baptism imagery here) then we can be raised to life because Death has no claim over us.

Sorry to give all of that but I feel that’s a very powerful imagery to understand Jesus’ atonement. Where I’m struggling with is there seems to be places clearly marked that people’s actions are caused by their fear of death. Cain built a city after he killed Abel because he was afraid of those who would take revenge on him. We have refugee cities in Israel for people to flee if they accidentally killed someone so the family of the deceased wouldn’t take revenge. It seems all over Scripture, how much the power of death, chaos and decreation plays into the Biblical narrative.

Finally, I guess I’ll land on one Scripture that I can’t seem to reconcile

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— **15 **and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

So my big TLDR:

  1. If humans died before the Fall, then to have a historical Adam and Eve, they would have had a spiritual death (unless the garden granted potential immortality)
  2. Plenty of Scripture speaks of death ( seemingly both physical and spiritual) to have power over us to enslave us.
  3. Jesus died a physical death to show that death doesn’t claim us and to set us free those who feared death.

Did we fear death only because we were separated from God?

Was our physical death always part of the human story then and something we have misunderstood in the Biblical narrative?

Why would Jesus’ physical death and resurrection be only a solution to our spiritually dead selves? If death has seemed to lost its power but we were always designed to die, why were we freed from the fear of death?

Sorry for the long post and I hope I can get some fresh perspectives on this.

1 Like
2

There are at least 8 variants on the undersanding of the Atonement, but they all have one thing in common. The Atonement is about reconcilliation with God at the final judgement. Whether you lookat it as the Pascal lamb, a payment of debt, spiritual justice or whatever, it is about us being made pure to sit with God. it assumes eternity and the need to be perfect to be with God.
Death is almost secondary inasmuch is it only marks the end of this life. Traditional Judaism has no continuation of consciousness. The dead know nothing and are basically in the equivellent of a long sleep.
The basic fear of death is the unknown, or the cessation of sentience. If death is the end of that, it means the end of me. Jesus bascially introduced the idea of eternal bliss or torture and Christianity has grasped at it like the last straw it is. This life becomes little more than a rite of passage, which we automatically fail without Christ.
The whole concept of the fall of man is flawed from the word go. The Garden story seems to be trying to explain why the world is not a paradise and concludes that we must have done something to make it so. Enter Sin!

Without stepping on too many toes, there is an obsession with spirituality and Salvation that Christ tried to underrmine with His social parables. The Pharisees were as spiritual as it gets and they got it wrong! Shame no one gets that,

Richard

3

We weren’t designed to die. Consider Eden as a probationary situation where humans would be immortal so long as they remained loyal to Yahweh – and that was the idea, that God would have a human family to share His world with.
But sin brought death, which is primarily spiritual; the physical aspect is just a symptom of being disconnected from God. Our bodies are still subject to death, but as a cartoon character I once watched said, “But we get better!” We can lose our fear of death by trusting that we will indeed “get better”, not just getting our bodies back but the kind of bodies originally intended.

Because when death tried to grab Jesus, it found it had taken on something that “broke” it – Jesus died physically even though He didn’t have to, thus breaking the ability of death to hang on to humans. By being spiritually alive, our bodies become permanently ours; as Paul says, these material bodies take on the spiritual realm and are thus made immortal.

4

2 - Physical death is only the end of life if the spirit is dead and therein lies all the sting, tragedy and power of death over us.

3 - Jesus overcomes death by resurrection to a spiritual body, i.e. a life giving spirit 1 Cor 15:45.

Some fear of death is natural – instinctual. But the mind easily overcomes this in many many examples. But if the spirit lives then it isn’t really death after all, is it – more like the birth of the infant from a small world to a bigger one.

??? not sure what you are asking here ???
Clearly Jesus’ death and resurrection leads the way to life after physical death. How is Jesus suppose to show us there is life after physical death if He does not die a physical death?

Do we not still die a physical death? What change has Jesus brought us? Does the Bible not clearly explain that the spirit is reborn and brought back to life? And as Paul teaches in 1 Cor 15, the spirit has a body which is greater and more powerful than physical body ever was, just as God who is spirit is more powerful and capable than any physical body ever will be.

1 Like
5

Perhaps your wording can be misunderstood.

This notion of the spiritually dead cand be interpretted in more than one way. In the Atonement understanding it is aimed squarely at the time of Judgement as a get out of Jail free Card, Go to Heaven, move directly to Heaven do not pass through Hell.
Perhaps there is more to the act than that, and a relevance to this life as well.

Being spiritually dead could refer to a state of mind, both in terms of religious spirituaity, but also in terms of the will to live. Many people are burdoned down with guilt and regret with no way to relieve or remove them. God’s forgiveness can be that relief for this life giving our spirit new life and vigour and a peace that passeth all understanding.
Limiting the Atonement to just the last Judgement is only seeing half the story.

The presence of the Tree of Life would indicate that we had need of it to live eternally. Whether we want to take the Garden story litterally or alegorically our mortality is not in question. Our relationship woth God is in question. The Christian beleif is that we cannot have a relationship with God whiie still under the influence of sin, therefore the removal of that sin becomes important for this life as well as the next, assuming we want a relationship with God
The point here is that God does not enforce Himself onto us, and if we are happy without Him there is no need to impose gult or the notion of sin as some sort or persuasion. That is not the way He wants us to come to Him. Jesus clears away the barriers we perceive as much as any that might block God from us.

Richard

2 Likes
6

This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.