No. More like the image of God isn’t something that humans arrived at developmentally. Being capable of being an image bearer doesn’t make you an image bearer. (And this isn’t my idea I’m describing, it’s Middleton’s for the record.)
Yes, it’s a communal vocation, but one that bestows dignity on every member of the group, no matter their individual capacities.
Humanity is chosen. Adam and Eve are representative of collective humanity, and it’s collective humanity created in the image of God in chapter one.
What if there is no such thing as “sin”? What if we marched through our lives and made decisions that were defensible at the time but later were shown to be a violation of some law or norm. So a mistake, not a theological sin. Not a heaven or hell burden on an infant or the elderly.
Why impose a life diminishing concept on everyday humans?
What if there are questions which are completely meaningless?
Yeah… there are questions which are meaningless.
If you think we do not exist then something is wrong with your definition of the word “exist.”
The moon is not made of green cheese by any reasonable definition of those words.
And clearly there are such words as “what” and “sin.” But of course we may ask what do these words mean?
How about the word “sin”? typical ideas about its meaning are…
not living up to some dude’s expectations.
disobeying some divine dictate.
thinking or feeling in an unapproved manner.
well…
I really don’t know why I should care if I live up to some dude’s expectations so this definition is worthless to me.
This sounds like the scam of someone seeking power over other people, so I am not interested in this definition.
You can shove this invention of thought police up where the sun don’t shine.
And yet I am a Christian because I have found a meaning to the word “sin” which is reasonable and worth considering.
sin = self-destructive habits.
Yeah I believe in God. No not the “God” of those using religion to manipulate and profit from the naivety of people. I mean the God who is capable of speaking for Himself – a rational God who commands things for a reason. And thus it is really the reasons why which make these things which you should pay attention to. So even though God does command them, and we would be wise to follow them, they are not sins just because He commands them.
My reaction to that question is to think what sin is.
I do not think that ‘sin’ is just breaking a commandment. I partly agree with mitchellmckain that sin includes self-destructive habits in our life. I would add that ‘self-destructive habits’ is just one aspect of sin.
It goes much deeper, to the question who is the ruler of your life, who decides? When we go away from the rule (kingdom) of God, we make a statement: I am the highest ruler in my life, I decide what is right or wrong. Our intentions of what to do in life may be ok but the consequences are far from ok. We bring chaos to the world instead of peace.
If we violate a law without understanding that it was a violation, the punishment is not as hard as when we do it deliberately, knowing that we break the law. In many cases, we are not ignorant, we know we are breaking a commandment or doing something that may have destructive consequences to ourselves or others. We may make excuses to explain what we do but those are just excuses. Maybe we should learn to say: no excuses, sir. It would be more honest.
Not cleverly hidden in my comment about sin is that sin doesn’t exist for an atheist like me. Living without the dogma of religion is quite freeing. I give more to the world than take. I do so without supernatural guidance.
To pick up on your ruler comment, I am indeed the ruler of my life. I make all the decisions and suffer or enjoy the consequences. I don’t agree that those consequences “…bring chaos to the world instead of peace.” Why would that be?
Mitchell: My understanding of sin is its a violation of a religious tenet. If no religion, no sin. Maybe for an individual, sin = self destruction, but I don’t think that definition applies to all of us.
Okay, I’m following along. We’ve invoked @JRM so many times, maybe he’ll weigh in and clarify?
Your statement left open the possibility that God waited until H. sapiens emerged the clear “winner” of the evolution derby, then God “chose” them to be his image. I just wanted to make sure that wasn’t what you had in mind.
Absolutely agree.
Again, absolutely agree. Two nitpicky points lie behind my objection.
The term “chosen” immediately makes me think of “election” in the Reformed tradition. But if everyone is chosen, is anyone individually chosen in the ordinary sense of the word? (Choosing humanity as a whole is different than choosing Abram or choosing Israel from among the nations, don’t you think?)
We don’t know at what point in history God said, “Let us make adam in our image…” Perhaps it was before he laid the foundations of the earth, or was it after everything else was prepared and set in order? Nor do we know when God blessed humanity and gave them the vocation of imago Dei. Is it the same moment as reflected in Gen 2:7?
I don’t see why it can’t be an open possibility for people trying to fit the image of God with evolution. If you think evolution is a completely unguided process that God was just hanging out watching and seeing what happened.
I think the one thing I would assert is that however we talk about it, it’s not correct to talk about the image of God as something that evolded. But we can talk about the evolutionary trajectory of things like cognitive abilities and moral reasoning, which make being the image of God possible. I don’t personally think you can point to some point on the evolutionary continuum of hominims and be like “There, that’s where humans became the image of God because that’s when they could X, Y, Z.”
I don’t think it’s right to conflate individual election to salvation and some kind of general telos of humanity. It’s pretty different conceptually for me to assert that some people are created for eternal life and other for damnation versus humanity is chosen to participate in a vocational call to represent God in creation. There’s still free will in that. Vocational calls can be individually accepted or rejected. Not everyone fulfils their telos.
Actually I think the choseness of Israel mirrors the choseness of humanity. Humanity was chosen to be a blessing to creation by representing God. Israel is chosen to be a blessing to the nations by representing God.
Right, and I don’t think you can interrogate the biblical text and get that info, no matter what instruments of torture you apply.
But that makes your question even more nonsensical.
Surely you do not believe there are no religions with rules??? If you define sins in this way then clearly sins do exist.
Oh so your question is merely…
What if a person doesn’t believe in any rules of a religion?
How is that different than asking…
What if a person doesn’t have blue eyes?
Seems like the answer should be that some people need to mind their own business.
Is this like…
maybe mercury is only poisonous for some people.
of course I agree that there are some things which are not universally harmful or are at least more harmful to some than others. But there are other things which are harmful to everyone.
And no it is not just individual, because we are all connected and the welfare of the whole community has a rather big impact on the well being of the individuals who are a part of it. AND I would consider something sinful even if it is only harmful to some people. The man strangely immune to mercury would not be exempt from a moral prohibition against spraying mercury into the air of a public place.
For another example, murder and theft are destructive of the social order and thus damaging to the ability of people to work together in providing goods and services. Thus it degrades the quality of life for everyone.
Or perhaps what you really mean is that not everyone agrees about what is sinful or self-destructive. But then that is kind of the whole point of defining sin as self-destructive habits, because then there is a burden of proof to show that these things are in fact self-destructive (or destructive of the community). It should be clear from my posts above that the opinion or dictates of some self-important mouth breather does not interest me.
Where there is no proof then at most these can only be the dictates of a personal morality – and thus indeed sins only within the context a how a particular person chooses to conduct their own life.
Hi Jay and Christy, I see two different ideas here in your discussion. One is that the imago Dei doesn’t consist in certain capacities, but in our calling or vocation to represent God in the world. That’s about what most biblical scholars think Genesis 1 means by the image.
The other idea is more speculative and relates to the evolution of Homo sapiens. A possible scenario is that after humans evolved the capacities that would enable them to image God, God revealed himself to them and entered into a relationship with them, calling them to represent him in the world. I have proffered this as a possible scenario.
But you probably know that Darrel Falk has a new book coming out called The Origin of Our Species (Cascade), which has a much more nuanced scenario (it draws on multiple lines of research about human evolution).
Mitchell: Sins exist for you, but, as an atheist, not for me.
As for, " What if a person doesn’t believe in any rules of a religion?" I don’t see how that should lead to you suggesting that I mind my own business. Not trying to be confrontational at all.
When you say that “[sin] is not just individual”, that seems to contradict what you said earlier that sin is self-destructive.
This is odd: “the opinion or dictates of some self-important mouth breather does not interest me.” Well. My original post about the existence of sin was both a statement and a question. It was an honest question, not meant to attack. Bummer that you took it that way.
The BioLogos forum shines among discussion groups for its civility and patience.
Thanks for the clarification. I think we’re all agreed on this one. (Meaning I learned it from you in the first place! haha)
That’s a common scenario among conservative interpreters, and I understand BL isn’t going to favor one interpretation of historical Adam & Eve over the other as its “official” stance. I don’t mind taking sides on the question, but I leave open the possibility that I’m wrong. We’re all stepping into speculative territory when it comes to the relationship of early Genesis to human evolution.
There are a whole lot of logical and theological problems when one speculates that God revealed himself to either a select population or a representative couple in recent history. But I’ll let that slide for now. Interested to hear Dr. Falk’s angle. I haven’t felt up to writing recently, but I’ve kept up pretty closely on the science of human evolution. Curious to see what his much more nuanced scenario might be.
You said you are an atheist. Maybe I should congratulate you for your strong faith, it demands much faith to be sure that God does not exist.
If you do not believe that God/gods exist, then it is natural that you do not care about rules that are commandments of God/gods. Maybe we should use other words instead of ‘sin’. I believe that most commandments aim for the wellbeing of the society. Although we all have to make our decisions individually, biblical scriptures are more focused on society than individual. Breaking of commandments aimed to ensure the wellbeing of the society cause harm, both to individuals (including you) and to the society. Instead of ‘sin’, maybe we should speak about violation of guidelines that aim to ensure wellbeing within the society.
That leads to the question about chaos. I have no doubt that many atheists have good intentions. In practice, our good intentions remain often wishes that never come true. Our motivations are basically selfish, our decisions reflect selfish motivations. When a large part of the people living in a society make their own rules and selfish decisions, we get increasing chaos in the society.
We can try to control that chaos by inventing common rules, dictated by the majority or a dictator. That leads us again to a situation where someone else becomes the ruler, telling what you can or cannot do. The question is then who dictates the rules that aim to control chaos within the society, assuming that you are not the dictator of that society? Are rules decided by a human dictator or voting majority any better than the rules told by God who according to classic Christianity knows matters better than humans and is good?
According to your definition they exist because religions with rules exist. The fact you don’t believe in those religions doesn’t change this.
You seem to be playing a two sided game. Restricting the idea to religion when you want to say they don’t apply to you and then imagining them as something apart from religion when you want to say they don’t exist. I look at it both ways without this kind of hypocritical inconsistency. If defined by religion then I simply don’t believe in them without any nonsense about them not existing. Obviously self-destructive habits exist and that is the only understanding of “sin” which has any meaning to me, requiring a demonstration of such a self-destructive nature before I expect them to be accepted.
Its like telling a person that colors don’t exist even if they don’t share your condition of being color blind. So you don’t see them. Obviously this doesn’t mean they don’t exist – it only means you don’t see them.
Incorrect. I explained that. “we are all connected and the welfare of the whole community has a rather big impact on the well being of the individuals who are a part of it. AND I would consider something sinful even if it is only harmful to some people. The man strangely immune to mercury would not be exempt from a moral prohibition against spraying mercury into the air of a public place.”
It is not odd if it is read in context. It had NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with religious people dictating sins to other people. The context was the burden of proof to show that something is in fact destructive (of self or community).
Let me remind you of something often pointed out by intelligent atheists. We are all atheists relative to the religions we don’t believe in. Therefore, there isn’t as much a divide between you and me as you try to make out. Not only was I not raised in any religion but immersed in criticisms of the Christian establishment, but there are plenty of religions (and their “sins”) which I don’t believe just like you.
Covenant theology must be essential in this context. As a newb, I’ve detected it in Longman, which was confirmed by his association with Meredith Kline, and I’d genuinely be interested in a course on covenant theology from the likes of Longman and Walton. Zondervan Academic could really do something outstanding with this.
Kai. I like that you took the time to respond. My response: “violations of guidelines” is a nice secular definition of sin. And I agree that chaos can be controlled by guidelines created by a dictator or a voting majority or a religion.
My world view is based on the scientific method. Evidence and reason and supportable conclusions. It requires no faith as you suggest. Zero. As for your last question, its not possible to answer because I don’t believe in your god.