This is incorrect. As evidenced by other early Christian writings, such as the author of Luke-Acts in Acts 17:26, who seemed to be familiar with Pauline thought and possibly even Paul personally. Paul also references the concept once again in 1 Cor. 15:20-22. It is strengthened even further if you accept Pauline authorship of Ephesians (see esp. Eph. 2:1-3); if you do not, this still serves as evidence that original sin has its origin in early Christian writings. It also has representation in the church fathers, attested to by Spanheim the Younger: “By Tertullian, it is called a transmitter of evil; by Cyprian, domestic evil; by Arnobius, the vice of inborn infirmity; by Ambrose, the infused and coagulated contagion of transgressions. By Chrysostom, the first sin.” Not purely Augustinian in origin.
Additionally, good arguments can be made that the verse in question (Rom. 5:12) can be rendered as “in whom” based on other passages where επι is translated “in.” J.H. Heidegger makes this argument. It appears 127 times in the Perseus catalogue (Perseus Search Results), usually rendered “on account of.”
The same quest was undertaken to try and prove the New Perspective, a la Sanders, Dunn, etc. Westerholm has demonstrated it has culminated into similarly specious results about what “works of the law” signified, and that rather clues from the texts are more decisive in determining what Paul meant, because in the end, “all we have is the text.”
To be be perfectly blunt, it is more because the apostolic writings contend it is more.
Are you at all aware of the translation issues around sinning “in Adam?” There are some Reformed arguments that don’t hold up when you read what the text actually says and not Augustine’s interpretation of a text with a Latin translation error.
Yes. I mentioned them above. These arguments are unpersuasive when balanced with other early Christian writings, including other references in the New Testament itself. They are further unpersuasive when you wade into the grammatical possibilities of how Rom. 5:12 can be rendered.
“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”
It’s Paul speaking per the author of Acts. Paul believed in a historical Adam. No dispute from me on that. How does this verse support original sin? Belief in a historical Adam is not the same as belief in original sin and its imputation.
Ephesians? We can leave authorship aside:
2 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world,[a] following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
How does that support original sin? I considered myself dead through sin before being saved and I don’t accept original sin.
At best you have Romans 5 and 1 Cor 15. Not very much in the grand scheme of scripture.
This is how you choose to interpret them based on what authority and model of inspiration you think fits the Bible the best. I think scripture describes the death of Jesus in a host of different ways using a variety of images I do not feel compelled to take literally in every detail. Some of them even look accommodated to the time.
Yes, Jesus was cast as the fixer of Adam’s wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Adam didn’t exist and couldn’t cause what the texts claim when taken literally. Ancient myth doesn’t trump modern science and that means reformed theology like this is utterly bankrupt.
All we have is the text? Is this just living in an inerrancy bubble? Without context an ancient text is hardly going to be clear. The new perspective on Paul is on solid ground. The reformed crowd naturally doesn’t like it because it undermines the basis for some for some of their beliefs.
It isn’t an issue of making something unnecessarily complex. It’s an issue of trying to understand - or more importantly live into it in the first place. Some here simply find your reckoning of all this to not be a compelling understanding of what Paul (much less Jesus in the gospels) is teaching. In other words (speaking for myself at least) - it is my interest in staying grounded in Christ - as remembered and recorded by those closest to him and his apostles - that keeps me from buying into an invented god who ends up looking a lot more like the dim reflection of some subsequent theologians than like the majestic and loving Creator of the universe.
Assuming they were real, the problem is that we never really got to know what Eden was supposed to be about. If Michael Heiser is right, there was a whole program of activity that never got off the ground and we know next to nothing about it.
If Eden was real it was on earth right? Was it some bubbled off existence with different laws of physics? If not, I think I have a good idea of what it was like.
I forget when it happened, but the idea that anyone is held accountable for anyone else’s sin was condemned fairly early, and one reason was that only Christ has that office (in the old sense). A theology professor I knew noted that and said that if any human can be held accountable for the sin of some other human then it robs Christ of His glory – an interesting concept.
Which doesn’t bother the East at all; they tend to think that humans are broken enough that adding any guilt from somewhere else is both impossible and futile.
I’ve been pondering the Greek here for a bit–
ἐποίησέν τε ἐξ ἑνὸς πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων
and it strikes me that Adam isn’t necessary as a literal person in Paul’s argument there on Mars Hill, only that there have been one man who was ancestor to us all – which science attests to on the physical/material side of things.
The I Corinthians passage is more interesting–
ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν τῷ Ἀδὰμ πάντες ἀποθνήσκουσιν
especially in that Paul uses a definite article in front of “Adam”. If Paul is thinking in Hebrew or Aramaic, this hearkens back to the Garden stories in Genesis where the usage is also with a definite article; we treat “Adam” as a name but with the definite article it’s just a generic, “the man”. It is thus reasonable to render the passage this way:
“for as in the man all die”
especially since Paul has been speaking of “a man” prior to this.
I don’t see any relevance to the topic in the Ephesians passage.
As for Romans 5:12, the Vulgate mistranslated it. “In him” would be contrary to Paul’s usage of ἐφ’ ᾧ to refer back to a concept introduced (much) earlier and not to an immediately preceding noun or pronoun. The referent is thus " through one man sin entered the world and through sin death", not to “one man”. [IMO Heidegger is grasping at straws.]
= - = + = - = † = - = = = - =
Invoking Chrysostom in support of Augustine isn’t entirely honest; he only calls it the “first sin”, which though is a way that Augustine uses the term is not the one that is meant. Tertullian isn’t talking about what Augustine means, either; he’s talking about how each new soul is corrupted (based on the idea that new souls are derived from the souls of the parents, which is more than a little derived from pagan ideas) – and that’s really the case with Cyprian as well. I’m not familiar with Arnobius, nor on what Ambrose says on the matter.
Taken together the mentioned Fathers definitely constructed a model into which Augustine could infuse his more drastic ideas, but they didn’t go as far as he did – it occurs to me that they didn’t have the translation he did (which could be the basis of a paper all by itself).
Paul has at least three models. There’s the one where Jesus took our punishment in a legal process, the one where Jesus triumphed over sin and death (which Paul treats as actual entities), the one where we are “in Christ” and since Christ died to sin and the law then we are safe from them, the one where Jesus is a sacrifice in the Old Testament model where blood cleans sin, the one where Jesus as redeemer-kinsman brought both sides together in peace . . . .
To borrow a phrase from Martin Luther . . .
This is most certainly true!
No need to hold to inerrancy for that, only that the text is the only “authorized” and thus authoritative source we have.
I had a professor who was an exegete and he liked saying “All we have is the text”, but another professor always added, “And what do the Fathers tell us about the text?” and yet another threw in, “What has scholarship told us about the text?” The latter two would have agreed that ultimately it is the text that everything boils down to, but they brought additional perspective to that text.
And of course if “all we have is the text” is meant in a “Bible only” understanding of sola scriptura, it’s not actually biblical.
“What it was like” is not the point: we are never told what the program was supposed to be, All we have fits into a two-act play which turn out to be the first and third acts and little to nothing is said about the intended second act.
The only hints we have are that humans were supposed to till and keep (manage) the Garden, and that they were to have dominion over the entire world. That suggests something more than just sitting around sky-clad enjoying the flowers – a program that my first college biology professor said was “science, starting with biology”.
The NT writers used OT scriptures. They certainly were familiar with Ezekiel 18. That speaks strongly against the idea of being condemned because of what an ancestor did.
We can say that we may inherit a ‘curse’ through the environment. The environment and teaching we experience during the childhood has a major impact on our thinking and living style. We get an ‘imprint’ as an inheritance from our parents. This does not condemn us but a bad imprint is likely to lead to a life style that is against the will of God. We are condemned because of our own sins.
No text has fallen from heaven. “All we have is the text” to me implies narrative criticism which I like. But most conservatives do not because they want to force
fit every book of the Bible together. I like to read Mark on its own terms, Luke on its own terms, Genesis on its own terms, etc. we have far more than the test. We have this broken model of sola scripture saying all these texts must be completely consistent on all details. What we have is human opinion.
Yes, many ancient sources say we are condemned because of our own sin as did Paul but they also say we are all subjected to death because of Adam’s sin. Is it really any better if we are not condemned because of someone else’s sin, only punished with it? Punished or cursed with death and a hard life of toil hardly seems any less unfair than condemned. But I believe we are talking hypotheticals about mythological narrative.
And Ezekiel 18 is a response to thinking we clearly find inside the Old Testament. God is a jealous and avenging God, punishing to the 3rd or 4th generation. Many Israelites believed this and it’s right in the Ten Commandments IIRC.
Running a garden and petting zoo for friendly animals forever doesn’t sound fun. The author of one of the flood stories seems to assume vegetarianism and the lion lying with the lamb was the pre-flood state. “ Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” All we have is the text. A text that has multiple contradictory versions of the same events at times. And numerous metaphors describing the work Jesus did on the Cross.
I was thinking of that as I see the ads on facebook for the composite Gospel being marketed by the folks who produced The Chosen. I really like The Chosen, but agree that each gospel brings something to the Bible individually that would get lost in a composite.
I can’t tell you how many times I cry when watching the Chosen. It is very moving and I thoroughly enjoy it but it is 100% pushing a conservative interpretation with a lot of things with how they are done.
I bought the box sets for season 1-2. The round table discussions are worth listening to for each episode and I think Bishop Barron replacing the other guy season 2 really elevated the discussion . Still waiting for the box set for season 3.
Why did you truncate the quote? What I wrote is nothing like a “petting zoo”–
Managing an entire planet, which as my biology professor suggested would entail investigating and learning the biology of it all, would be something that would take a lot of work over a lot of millennia, and even if the only goal was to understand the biology that would require learning a lot of others things – shipbuilding comes to mind, given the extensive oceans.
The Word of God
We believe that the Bible is the Word of God, fully inspired and without error in the original manuscripts, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and that it has supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.
Question: Do you subscribe to that belief?
If so, does that mean, you are are a Young Earth Creationist?
I went to a Converge church my whole life until two years ago. Like most Baptist denominations, local churches have their own constitutions, positions, and belief statements, and the affiliation with the denomination is cooperative not hierarchical. You get everything from Greg Boyd to John Piper and a whole lot inbetween.
First of all, they have their theology screwed up: “the Word of God” is Jesus. The scriptures are only called the word of God because they speak of Him.
I note that they skip the fact that the scriptures are human literature.
I was happy to see a book recommendation, not so happy to see just how spendy that book is!