(I have relocated this comment from the Alan Hirsch, ‘The Forgotten Ways, and the future of the church in Europe’ post because it gets too far away from Alan’s Apostolic Genius argument. That’s probably my fault for dumping too much of my own stuff in the review. Andrew)
Andrew - I hope this won’t seem obsessive, but I do find your perspectives interesting, even when I don’t totally share them, and I am always interested in teasing out the practical implications of your radical revision or re-imagining of the Christian faith. I sometimes feel I hear more clearly what you are not saying when it comes to your ideas on the practical expression of church and mission, than what you are saying.
I picked out some statements in your response to Alan Hirsch and his book The forgotten ways and I wondered if you could explain these more fully. In the end, it seemed to me that what you wanted to advocate was not discipleship using Jesus and the disciples as model, not communitas, not liminality, not (primarily) faith, but a re-imagining of the content of the good news. So I was looking for something tangible which might point the way towards this new content as expressed in missional practice.
Here are the statements, with some questions:
I want to encourage people to discover – practically, prophetically and proleptically – the fulness of the new creational blessing that has been recovered in Christ.
- What is ‘the fulness of the new creational blessing’?
If disciple-making in the manner of Jesus is so critical for mission, why does Paul have nothing to say about ‘discipleship’ in his letters?
- Doesn’t Paul assume in the letters, especially the ‘ethical’ sections, a familiarity with the gospels, and especially their teaching concerning relationships within the Christian community?
it seems to me that the missional challenge that we face in the West, in the absence of persecution, is to demonstrate the fulness of God’s alternative way of being human. It may sound a bit alarming but I think that discipleship construed simply as following Jesus is too narrow.
- What is the fulness of God’s alternative way of being human, which elsewhere you put in terms of the possible need for a focus on quality rather than quantity in churches and church life?
At a certain juncture Jesus invested his life and embedded his teaching in his followers, ‘developing them into authentic disciples’ (102), but this venture cannot be extracted from the larger story that goes back to Abraham and looks forward first to the vindication of the faithful community and then to the final renewal of heaven and earth.
- This suggests that the NT period, with the teaching of Jesus especially, and the nature of the NT church(es), was provisional and temporary, a parenthesis within a more significant story which had a different focus and emphasis. This seems to me to strip good news as it might be reimagined for today entirely of significant content. A historic Jesus is also stripped out (in terms of his significance for faith and practice today) and replaced with an existential Jesus. Or if not, what are we meant to believe about Jesus for the practice of faith today?
what we need to go back to is not the Gospel story but the moment when the early church began to emerge from the transitional period characterized by pagan oppression, from the story of the Son of man, and took upon itself the task of reconceiving the whole of life: in other words, the moment at which the Christendom paradigm began to take shape.
The previous comment also applies to this statement.
The idea of a centralized place of worship to which the nations are attracted is central to the Old Testament hopes, and I’m not sure this is altogether superseded in the New Testament. The megachurch is undoubtedly overworked in the US, but in Europe I can see symbolic significance in large-scale attractive worship.
This is almost as near as you come to a specific suggestion - which I find odd, as it seems to run counter to most of what you have to say about becoming an authentic humanity, where the focus isn’t on large meetings separate from everyday life, but life in its everyday form for ordinary people.
This comment is not intended to be a critical ‘put down’, but an invitation to you, and other contributors, to participate in what a re-imagining of the faith might look like in its practical outworkings. There is plenty to re-imagine, and maybe some pointers would set off an avalanche of re-imagining, in which this site might act as a re-imagining think-tank for the church.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
That’s probably about right. I wouldn’t say I’m not advocating discipleship, communitas, liminality and faith - and I’m certainly not saying that I think Alan is wrong: I find his Apostolic Genius argument very compelling and I am delighted that Christian Associates as a church-planting organization is working with him and taking his stuff seriously. But at a personal level I am faced with the (quite difficult) challenge of integrating his model into a comprehensive narrative theology. One of the questions that arises has to do with how we understand the content of the ‘good news’ (we’ll come back to this), but the broader issue is how do we contextualize, both biblically and culturally, the paradigm of a radical Jesus movement.
My argument in Re:Mission is that the story of the people of God is the story of the recovery of the lost blessing of creation (Gen. 1:28) through the promise that is made to Abraham, and then of the transmission of that blessing in some form to the whole world. That seems to me a very expansive hope. It could not be fulfilled without the descendants of Abraham becoming a great nation in a land of blessing, their whole social, political and religious life organized around the Law of YHWH. So Israel becomes, at least ideally, God’s creation in microcosm. When crisis comes the people enter into liminal experiences in which something of the fulness of that blessing is lost. The exile is archetypal is this regard, but the story of Jesus is also a crisis story: Israel is approaching a moment of judgment when it will forfeit certain critical structures of its existence as God’s microcosm: the temple, Jerusalem, kingship and the land. How does it get through that?
For the people to survive that crisis and for the promise to Abraham to remain viable a faithful community must pursue an alternative, narrow, difficult and dangerous path. That, to my mind, is the story of the Son of man, which Jesus retrieves from Daniel in order to articulate the crucial hope that God will judge the apostate nation, but also forgive, restore, that he will defeat his enemies and give the kingdom to the faithful suffering community represented in and preceded by Jesus himself. (Of course, it’s not the only way he tells the story, but it seems to me central to his thinking.) That is a liminal experience: the people of God must abandon its old world, the secure structures of its life as God’s humanity in his land, and make a perilous journey. But that is not an indefinite journey. I think the New Testament foresees an end to it when the oppressive pagan superpower is finally defeated and the faithful community vindicated. They emerged from the tunnel and became God’s microcosm again, not in the land but dispersed throughout the oikoumenē - and, for better or worse, they chose to do so by constructing Christendom.
With the Christendom model now having collapsed we are again somewhat at sea, again in a state of liminality. But the conditions are very different to those of the early church, which is why I question how far we can take the radical Jesus movement argument. The task, I think, is to rebuild the whole framework, the mental and social infrastructure, by which we express the fact that we are heirs of a promise to make creation new again. I really don’t know what that will look like, but it must encompass the whole of what it means to be God’s creation: it is a way of life, expressed as community, observing justice and righteousness, in a good relationship with its natural and material environment, sharing in the inexhaustible creativity of God, and with a deep consciousness that God is present amongst us by his Spirit. I think Alan’s Apostolic Genius powerfully captures something of the missional dynamic that will help us to get there, but it isn’t the whole story.
But still, Paul does not use the terminology of ‘discipleship’. I can’t say I’ve looked at this very closely, but I wonder if he is not being sensitive to the fact that the life of the churches that he is forming in the pagan world is rather different to the life of those who left their homes and occupations to follow Jesus in Palestine. In Acts Luke continues to call the believers ‘disciples’ in the apostolic communities, but in a way that makes it all the more odd that Paul avoids the word.
Obviously there would be extensive overlap between the praxis of Jesus’ disciples and the praxis of Paul’s churches - not least in the expectation of opposition and suffering. But the context is different, so we have to ask whether the form of discipleship that we encounter in the Gospels is best suited for the context that we currently face.
That’s mostly answered above, at least in outline. The question I raise is whether the goal of being God’s alternative humanity, rescued from the corruption of the macrocosm, is to be achieved primarily through constant growth, perhaps to the extent of converting the whole world. What is going to make the biggest impact - let us say, prophetically? Is it the number of people worldwide who are part of this movement - compared to the number of Hindus or Muslims or secular humanists? Or is it the quality of the new life that we exhibit as a comprehensive alternative to the life of the macrocosm? Why not ask, for example: What is the optimum number of people, dispersed across the world, needed to live out this story?
I certainly wouldn’t describe the Jesus story as ‘provisional and temporary’: it leaves an indelible mark on the people that emerges from the dark tunnel of the Son of man story, just as the exodus experience left an indelible mark on Israel. We regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper just as Israel celebrated the Passover. We encounter God in the image of the one who died, was raised, and was given the kingdom, sovereignty over the people of God.
No, I disagree. The ‘good news’ is always an announcement about who God is and what he has done or is about to do. He is the creator: that is something that we announce to the world; we unpack its significance. He has brought into existence an alternative to fallen human society. He has stuck with that people despite their persistent failings. He rescued them from annihilation and transformed them by his Spirit. He reveals himself to the world through that people. He invites people from all nations and cultures to become part of a humanity that has been redeemed from the macrocosm, in which the deep divisions of race and class and gender have been overcome, and to be in relationship with the creator through Jesus Christ. He promises that evil and death will not have the final say over his creation, that he will make all things new. That seems pretty significant content to me.
I don’t follow that. I would be inclined to argue that it is modern evangelicalism that has constructed an existential Jesus who has no connection with history - or a Gnostic Jesus whose humanity is only an accident of history, who descends from the heavens like a coastguard from a helicopter to rescue us from the sinking ship of God’s creation.
My overriding concern is with the big mental structures - the narratives, the worldview - within which we develop specific practices. Christian Associates has had to wrestle with the tension at a practical level between developing large, ‘high impact’ churches and developing low impact missional initiatives. Both have the potential for inauthenticity. That’s why I think it is helpful to step back and consider our prior being as a people. An authentic people (reminding ourselves that we can only ever make this claim on the basis of grace) can express itself, congregate, in all sorts of different ways - and get it wrong in all sorts of different ways.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
"the story of the people of God is the story of the recovery of the lost blessing of creation (Gen. 1:28)"
So here’s the "lost blessing of creation":
This blessing isn’t lost — it has already happened. The earth is full of people; humanity has pretty thoroughly exercised dominion over every living thing. I see only two ways to regard it otherwise:
1. The humans who have filled and subdued the earth aren’t really human as far as God is concerned. This sounds like a mythical ideology for justifying racism and genocide: let’s get rid of all the sub-humans who currently fill and subdue the earth so that we true humans can take over.
2. Genesis 1:26ff. isn’t really about creating the human race; rather, it’s metaphorical for God’s work of setting apart a chosen people within the larger category of humanity. If so, then by implication the creation narrative refers not to the whole world but to a "microcosm" established inside the larger world. In this case the creational blessing is relevant only to the microcosm and its occupants; the larger world is affected only tangentially by what happens inside the microcosm. To the extent that the Gospel restores the lost blessing of the microcosmic Creation, to that extent is it relevant only to the occupants of the microcosm.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
God’s intentions concerning the ‘blessing’ of the man and the woman and the mandate to "fill the earth and subdue it" in Genesis 1:28 were distorted by the events of Genesis 3, in which ‘blessing’ was replaced by ‘curse’.
The subsequent story shows that the earth was not filled and subdued in the way God had intended it. There are recurrent echoes of the Eden motifs in various ‘rescue’ attempts: eg Noah and his sons: Genesis 9:1; Abraham: Genesis 12:2; Genesis 13:15-17 (the new Eden); Genesis 17:6,8; Genesis 18:18; Genesis 22:17.
The entry into the land under Moses/Joshua retains and repeats the fruitfulness and blessing motifs, mingled with the suggestion of a new Eden - Numbers 13:23-24; Numbers 13:26-27; but now the land will not be taken without conflict - Numbers 13:28-29. Blessings promised in the land multiply the blessings of Eden and the promises of blessing in the world to its original bearers - Deuteronomy 28:1-14; but blessings are balanced with a multiplication of curses for disobedience - which reads out as Israel’s narrative as it actually transpired: Deuteronomy 28:15-68.
The astonishingly detailed and accurate prophetic outline of Israel’s history in Deuteronomy almost inevitably raises the question of whether it was given in the time of Moses at all, or whether it was ‘rewritten’ in the light of Israel’s history during and after the exile. Nevertheless, it sums up the self-awareness of Israel which the biblical texts wished to instil, and which Israel so tragically failed to apply to herself.
This ‘failure’ led to the single event that in itself brought about not only the fulfilment of Israel’s destiny, but the fulfilment of the promises of blessing made to Abraham, and therefore the promises embedded in the original creation mandates. These were of course fulfilled in the person of Jesus.
One does not have to accept this interpretation, but if we are looking at the New Testament scriptures as an interpretive fulfilment of the Old, there is no other option. For Paul, Jesus was the promised ‘seed’ of Abraham, the blessing of a progeny who would fill the whole earth: Galatians 3:16 / Genesis 13:15-16; Genesis 22:18. The promise fulfilled in Christ only becomes corporate when those who are joined in union with Christ become joint partakers of the promise and the blessing.
The creational blessing therefore is not some abstract, subjectively understood and applied concept. It is the fulfilment of that blessing in Christ, who overcame sin and death, creation’s main adversaries, and in whom this victory is shared and dispensed by his followers across the world. At the heart of the victory is the message of the cross. From that victory flow innumerable expressions of blessing as the Spirit gives life. This is the "manifold (polupoikilos - many coloured - multifaceted) wisdom of God" - Ephesians 3:10 - which God intended to show to the principalities and powers "through the church".
Where did that blessing find its intended home and location? In the resurrection of Christ as the firstfruits of the new humanity and the new creation. How does it find its expression in the world? Through those who believe in him and receive his new life, expressed first through the Spirit, and subsequently through the full adoption as sons, with resurrection bodies, and ultimately a renewed earth as the environment on which these resurrection bodies will live.
One is not obliged to accept this interpretation, but if one takes the NT as an interpretive fulfilment of the OT, then this is it. Other interpretations have significantly distorted or overlooked specific aspects of NT teaching, and certainly fall far short of the full range of NT teaching and promises as fulfilled in Christ himself, offering something far paler and more limited in its place.
I only bring a perspective, of course, and not a dogmatic assertion of doctrinal certainties.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
" God’s intentions concerning the ‘blessing’ of the man and the woman and the mandate to "fill the earth and subdue it" in Genesis 1:28 were distorted by the events of Genesis 3, in which ‘blessing’ was replaced by ‘curse’."
I hear you asserting it, but I don’t see the exegetical work that sustains the assertion. Immediately after Genesis 3 do we not see Adam and Eve being fruitful and multiplying, such that in Genesis 4 two new humans have been added to the population? In 4:1 Eve says "I have gotten a manchild with the help of Yahweh" — so God is still enabling Eve to be fruitful even after the debacle in the Garden. And doesn’t Yahweh enter into relationship with these new humans, having regard for the one (Abel) and exhorting the other (Cain) to do well? Even after leveling a new curse on Cain in v. 11-12, God extends his protection to Cain (v. 15). Immediately thereafter we learn that Cain’s wife has borne a son named Enoch (v. 17), after which we get Enoch’s genealogy (v. 18-22) — so the fruitful multiplication continues. Then at the beginning of Gen. 5 the narrator gives us Adam’s genealogy in the context of Gen. 1:
This is a reiteration of the blessing of creation: man in the image of God, Seth in the image of Adam, with no mention of a curse that rescinds the blessing and the image. There follows a listing of the generations of Seth, demonstrating the fruitful multiplication of the original blessing. No?
God might not have been satisfied with man — we’re even told that He was sorry He made man in the first place (Gen. 6:6). But it’s still man that He’s talking about, not some subhuman degenerate that devolved after the Fall. Some men please God, others don’t, but they’re all human and thus bearers of God’s image. No?
"The entry into the land under Moses/Joshua retains and repeats the fruitfulness and blessing motifs, mingled with the suggestion of a new Eden"
Why "a new Eden"? It’s a nice place that the scouting party describes in Num. 13, but it’s a different place, traversed by rivers with names different from the rivers that passed through Eden. And it’s already populated by people, big and strong people, and a lot of them (v. 28), that the Israelites are going to have to evict. The Israelites are "this people," "this nation"; the Hittites and Jebusites and so on are other peoples, other nations (Num 14:9-16). When the Israelites slaughter the occupants of Canaan they acknowledge that they’re killing real people, not some subhuman race posing as people. No?
"the fulfilment of the promises of blessing made to Abraham, and therefore the promises embedded in the original creation mandates."
There is no Biblical justification for conflating the Genesis 1 creational blessing with the promise to Abraham. The human race continues being fruitful and multiplying, but within humanity God selects out a subpopulation on which he bestows blessings that go beyond those of creation, which were never rescinded.
"the promises embedded in the original creation mandates. These were of course fulfilled in the person of Jesus. One does not have to accept this interpretation, but if we are looking at the New Testament scriptures as an interpretive fulfilment of the Old, there is no other option."
That’s just plain wrong on exegetical grounds. The creational blessing refers only to being fruitful and multiplying and subduing the earth — features of the species that occupies the top of the animal food chain. God also encourages the other creatures of the earth to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:22). Was that blessing too rescinded? Is there some special kind of sea creature, some special kind of bird, that some day will replace the ordinary sea creatures and birds that currently populate the earth through the usual fruitful-and-multiply procedure?
Certainly Jesus fulfills the promise to Abraham, but that promise is separate from the Genesis 1 blessing. Paul says that Jesus ushers in a new creation, not a renewal of the old creation. These are two separate projects.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
I think you would probably agree that Genesis 3 had a huge bearing on the project, and command, John. The history of the OT is of a world which did not conform to the benevolent wishes of a deity who desired blessing and fruitfulness of mankind.
At the same time, God did not withdraw from the world, neither did man become an entirely subhuman degenerate - though it has to be conceded that at times things came perilously close to this state.
God’s involvement with man (and woman) focused on key people who carried His recovery project. And the echoes of the original Eden blessing and command are strikingly repeated - with Noah, Abraham, and Moses/Joshua on their entry into the land.
The heart of the issue was, however, that the recovery project, which was always focused on creation, was not to be fulfilled in them. Hence the significance of Abraham, and the coming ‘seed’, in whom, according to Paul’s understanding, God’s creation-wide purposes were to be fulfilled.
This may not be to your taste, or your interpretation of the scriptures. But this is how the NT interprets the OT - especially through Paul, who provides much of (but not exclusively) the interpretive focus.
I don’t see two projects at all. There is only one creation, that which God initiated, that which was marred in Genesis 3, and that which Jesus brought into renewal - through his death on the cross, and explicitly in his resurrection.
The focus on creation is healthy, for that is where the NT describes the fulfilment of God’s plans, as windingly pursued in the OT. Creation, blessings/curses, fruitfulness, - key themes of the scriptures.
BTW Genesis 5 only reiterates the position before Genesis 3, concerning Adam. Yet in the wider plans of God, he did continue to carry the blessing - though now immeasurably complicated by the oppressive reality of Genesis 3 in the on-going events of Genesis and the OT.
You are quite lucky; I was going to close down further contributions from myself with a judiciously selected poem, but I couldn’t get the line-endings to format correctly. Maybe another indication of the continuing consequences of Genesis 3?
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
This seems like a "yes but" sort of response, Peter — you don’t really address any of the points I made in my prior comment. But never mind: I’ll let those stand as unrefuted truth and move on.
"And the echoes of the original Eden blessing and command are strikingly repeated - with Noah, Abraham, and Moses/Joshua"
This is true especially for Noah: "be fruitful and multiply" is what God tells him in Gen. 9:1. It makes sense for God to extend the creational command here since presumably Noah and his family are the only humans left on earth after the Flood. God’s promises to Abraham certainly allude to the creation: God makes Abraham’s barren wife fruitful and tells him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. The important question is this: does God’s promise of fruitful multiplication indicate that He regards Abraham’s lineage as the true humanity that will replace a failed species, even as Noah’s descendants replaced all those whom God drowned en masse because He regarded them collectively as corrupt beyond redemption? This I think is the position that Andrew maintains; perhaps you do too, Peter. I’m concerned that the Biblical writers really did intend to relegate the non-Abrahamic, non-Israelite "races" to subhuman status, thereby ascribing divine justification for forced enslavement and genocide. Alternatively, is God separating out a special people from among ordinary humanity, on whom he bestows a supplementary blessing over and above the general creational blessing that is already being fulfilled through the ever-increasing population and dominance of the human species? That’s at least marginally better, though you still end up with a racist divide between the ordinary men and the nation of supermen.
"Hence the significance of Abraham, and the coming ‘seed’, in whom, according to Paul’s understanding, God’s creation-wide purposes were to be fulfilled."
I find nothing in Paul’s "seed of Abraham" discourse (Gal. 3:15ff) alluding to the creation. The context is always and only the covenant with Abraham and the means by which the Gentiles may now enter into this covenant.
"This may not be to your taste, or your interpretation of the scriptures. But this is how the NT interprets the OT - especially through Paul, who provides much of (but not exclusively) the interpretive focus."
Again, I hear the assertion but I don’t see the evidence. Where does Paul interpret the Gospel as fulfillment of an incomplete promise or blessing from the creation event? Last fall I wrote a post called The Creation Narratives as Thought Experiments, in which I looked at each NT reference to the creation narratives. The "good stuff" doesn’t really get rolling until about 80% through the thread, at which point we arrive at discussion of the critical texts for our purposes, starting here.
There are only three relevant texts in which the work of Christ is explicitly linked to the Creation: 1 Corinthians 15:12-49, Romans 5:12-21, and Romans 8:19-23. That’s not much text on which to base a contention that the creation narrative is a dominant theme underlying the Gospel. Each of these three passages focuses on the attainment through Christ of eternal life. Looking at God’s promises to Noah, Abraham and Moses, I see not the faintest allusion to personal immortality — only to collective blessings on peoples and nations, as has been discussed extensively here on OST.
1 Cor. 15 and Rom. 5 explicitly link human death with Adam’s sin, supporting your contention that Christ restores a suspended creational promise. However, neither of these texts suggests that mortal humanity doesn’t "count" as truly human. Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:35-49 that the perishable human body is "natural," possessed of its own unique "glory, a "seed" that sprouts after it dies. Paul here strongly implies that mortality is man’s naturally created condition, and that immortality is a supplemental, supernatural glory, surpassing the natural creaturely condition of humanity. The realization of this supplement was delayed until Christ’s incarnation and resurrection.
Whether the Genesis 1 "be fruitful and multiply" exhortation should be separated from the implicit supplementary bestowal of eternal life in Genesis 2-3 is an important consideration in interpreting the extensiveness of Christ’s redemption. If Christ realizes the potential of human immortality implicit in the original created order, then presumably the entire creation is completed in Christ and so everybody is granted eternal life. Paul says as much in 1 Cor. 15:
In Romans 5:14 Paul observes that death reigned "even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s offense": i.e., even those who didn’t explicitly disobey God’s commands remained mired in mortality. By implication, immortality is a collective creational supplement, withheld from everyone through Adam and now bestowed on everyone through Christ. The only way around this universalist interpretation is to regard eternal life as a supplement offered not to all of created humanity but specifically to those who receive this life through faith in Christ. In other words, it’s necessary to separate the creation of humanity as a species from that subset of humanity which is granted immortality. (I offer more extensive observations on Romans 5 in connection with Andrew’s exegesis here, here and here.)
So, interpretive option one is universalism: everyone is mortal in Adam, everyone is immortal in Christ. There are a couple of other options, as I mentioned in my initial comment on this thread. Two: you can decide that only those who through faith in Christ receive the eternal life implicitly promised at the Creation are truly human as far as the Creator is concerned — again, I think this is Andrew’s position, and maybe yours too. Three, you can decide that the Genesis 1 creation narrative refers not to the creation of the human race but to the original establishment of that subset of humanity who throughout history have entered into relationship with God, and among whom the covenantal connection between obedience and life holds sway. The fourth option — that the creation of humanity is a separate project from the bestowal of eternal life on of some subset of the human race — is I think the traditional interpretation of the Church.
There are other options, but these I think are the main ones that are premised on Scripture being a reliable record of God’s thoughts.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
John - it’s quite possible that I haven’t addressed the points you were making (though I thought I had!). Maybe that’s because what seems to me very simple and obvious becomes rather more complicated when viewed from your perspective.
I don’t see anywhere that God is separating out a ‘true humanity’ in Abraham’s lineage, and relegating the rest of humanity to destruction as a subhuman, degenerate species. What is striking about Abraham’s lineage is that they can be just as corrupt as the rest of humanity - Abraham included. If Israel was supposed to be the ‘true humanity’, then the project was a ghastly failure.
My understanding of God’s project, and particularly as it becomes evident in the NT, is that God’s people were intended to be the means of bringing God’s blessing to the world, and that Israel had totally missed the point by regarding herself as a superior nation, with the rest of the world written off as ‘gentile dogs’. You seem to have adopted their prejudices as those of the biblical writers.
On the other hand, God was offering blessing to the world in a particular way. It wasn’t just an open-ended, free-and-easy, do-as-you-please kind of blessing. "God so (‘heutos’ - in this way) loved the world that he gave his only son - that whoever believes in him should not perish (either in AD 70 or eternally) but have eternal life (life of the age - which means the life given uniquely in the Holy Spirit and that which continues into eternity)".
I think you underestimate (or make a caricature of) the nature and power of sin, as the bible presents it, and hence the consequences of Genesis 3 (interestingly not mentioned in your response). Take a look at what happened to Adam’s view of God, after eating the fruit of the tree, and to his relationship with Eve. As a psychologist, this should be of particular interest to you. Then take a look at the following chapters of Genesis. God continued to interact with man. When did mankind decide to interact again with God? I make it Genesis 4:26b, and if you do a bit of computation on the time scales, it comes to about 235 years after the fall. What does that say about humanity’s attitude to God?
So we are not looking at some kind of writing-off of humanity as a ‘degenerate subspecies’, but we are looking at traits within people, which if not corrected, are on a pathway of calamitous declension. Something like this had happened to humanity in the time of Noah "when every imagination of the thoughts of all his heart was only evil continually" - Genesis 6:5. The response of God is very revealing - "The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain" - Genesis 6:6.
Something similar was happening in Genesis 15:16 - "In the fourth generation your descendants will return, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure". Sin is active and progressive. On the other hand judgement is always delayed, to give time for repentance - Romans 2:4. But God’s attitude is always surprising, for while not diminishing the reality of his wrath over injustice, his attitude is not one of delight in the judgement of sinful people: "Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord. Therefore repent and live!" - Ezekiel 18:31.
Your idea of "a racist divide between the ordinary men and the nation of supermen" is certainly not one that I recognise from my reading of the story of Abraham and his descendants, and is a distortion of any reading of how God responds to the changed conditions and circumstances brought into the history of the world in Genesis 3 from those that had been envisaged in Genesis 1 & 2.
Concerning the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham in Christ, and its application to creation - the wider application of the promise is implicit in the promise itself, which was "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" - Genesis 12:3, and that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth/stars in the sky/sand on the seashore. The promise always was worldwide, and hence for all creation. Even Israel saw herself as, in some way, being a light to the gentiles ("a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants" - Romans 2:19-20. When Christ, the promised seed, had come, what followed was the fulfilment of the worldwide promise made to Abraham by taking the message of the gospel of Christ throughout the world. You do not need to look for proof texts - the reality is in the acted-out drama of the NT.
It is in the light of the NT that OT phrases such as "be fruitful and multiply" derive significance. In what sense were Adam and Eve, and humanity, to be fruitful? In the fullest sense, by acting out God’s purposes throughout the world, and bearing the image of God throughout the world. This only became fully possible in Christ. What did God want to be multiplied throughout the world? In the first place, faithfulness to himself, which became explained and fulfilled in Christ.
Your various options presented in your final paragraph need to be seen against this backcloth. When they are so seen, the option which God is presenting, as seen in the light of the NT, is clear. And as an evangelist, I would say to you - get on board with God’s purposes instead of discussing the options!
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Well, Peter, I sense that your tolerance for detailed exegetical discussion is wearing thin, especially since you were hoping to engage Andrew in a discussion of discipleship and wound up talking to me about the creation. To remind you, I was picking up on two particular ideas from your original post, which you pulled forward from Andrew: "the fulness of the new creational blessing that has been recovered in Christ," and "the fulness of God’s alternative way of being human." In response to your questions, Andrew asserts that "Israel becomes, at least ideally, God’s creation in microcosm." He views Israel as "God’s alternative humanity, rescued from the corruption of the macrocosm." He says that God "has brought into existence an alternative to fallen human society."
I don’t think it requires a lot of complicated thinking to discover in this line of thinking a radical qualitative separation between ordinary humanity and the proposed alternative humanity. If this distinction were merely a matter of nationality or morality, of human choice or even God’s election, we’d still be talking about a division within the larger category "mankind." But when this division is applied retroactively to the creation itself, such that the category "mankind" is now to be applied exclusively to the alternative humanity, then a more radical — and more troubling — distinction is being put forward.
Maybe, as you say, this is a complication that’s only visible from my perspective, but I’d say my perspective isn’t an idiosyncratic one. Let’s call that perspective humanism: the essential equality of all humans. From a humanistic perspective, any nationality or sect or race that claims exclusive right to true humanity, and then justifies this claim from God’s creational perspective, constitutes a potentially grave threat to everyone else who doesn’t belong to that nationality or sect or race. I don’t think that’s so complicated.
The point of my exegetical excursions is to investigate whether this (frankly racist) ontology is intrinsic to the Biblical text. I don’t believe it is. As I’ve tried to demonstrate, the link between the Gospel and the Creation is tenuous even in Paul’s writings, as is the link between Abraham/Israel and the Creation in the Old Testament. It’s possible within a conservative reading of Scripture to assert the uniqueness of Israel and the Church without contending that only this subset of the human race meets God’s creational criteria for being truly and fully human. I’ve tried to demonstrate that these non-racist readings of the Gospel might even be truer to the text. Why then would anyone want to hold onto the ontological distinction whereby only Israel and the Church are truly human? At this point I’d have to start invoking psychological and sociological explanations rather than theological ones.
Good: I’m glad to hear it. So as you read the text Abraham’s lineage is not "God’s alternative humanity" as Andrew puts it, but rather a subset of ordinary humanity that’s been set apart by God, both for his own sake and for the sake of the rest of humanity.
Not so. I acknowledge that Paul associates mortality with Adam’s sin, and eternal life with the work of Christ to achieve reconciliation between sinful humanity and God. But even if God intended for man to be righteous and immortal, it’s not necessary to assert that sinful mortal men are somehow not wholly human. Immortality and righteousness were never intrinsic to the human condition; eternal life and justification have always been supplementary benefits presented to humans by God as supernatural gifts. It’s not that those who receive these gifts constitute an "alternate humanity;" it’s that they are ordinary humans who have been made beneficiaries of a superhuman grace. I suspect you’d agree with this interpretation.
Again, good.
I disagree. There is an intrinsically racist reading which regards the Abrahamic lineage as an alternate humanity, arising from the ashes of the failed original humanity of Genesis 1. I reject that particular reading, and it appears you do too.
As I said in my prior comment, I think this humanistic reading of the Gospel is the traditional interpretation of the Church. I don’t think you need to clutter it up by interpreting the "be fruitful and multipy" creational exhortation in spiritualized terms, as if it referred to the Church spreading the Gospel. It’s not there in the Genesis 1 text, any more than is God’s exhortation to the fish and the birds to spread the Gospel throughout the seas and the air.
I suppose the same could be said about just about every discussion here at OST. That said, I would never "get on board" with a religion that regards its adherents as the only authentic humans.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Actually, John, I’m avoiding Andrew at the moment - and maybe I ought to be avoiding you too. If I’m not reading or understanding you carefully enough at the moment, apologies, but you are certainly repaying me the compliment!
I take my interpretation of historical Israel from the NT, not the OT, as the starting point, where it says that Israel was:
"held prisoner(s) by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ" - Galatians 3:23.
The NT also says:
"the law is made not for good men but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers - and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God" - 1 Timothy 1:10.
Sums up the case against Israel under the law, doesn’t it? They were no better than the despised gentile nations from which they separated themselves. The only ‘racist’ ontology was the one Israel invented for herself; it certainly was not the one envisaged for her within her own scriptures.
You have caricatured sin in that you seem to see the alternatives as being between a proposed "authentic humanity" and a degenerate subspecies. At least, those are the alternatives which you seem to distinguish . If they were the actual alternatives, there would be no question as to what one thought of an ideology which made such a gross and sweeping oversimplification. Fortunately, there is no such simple polarisation in the scriptures - though again, as I have suggested, we come perilously close to it at times - for reasons which I hope you have understood.
I’m suggesting a rather more carefully nuanced and explored version of sin, following Genesis 3 (which you still need to read carefully, as a psychologist), and carried on throughout Genesis, and the rest of the OT, and forming the historical, political and religious background within Israel at the time of Jesus, and forming the very heart of his mission - not through mission statements and proof texts, but as the drama he was acting out in history.
The principal background here is the perceived absence by Israel of her own ‘forgiveness of sins’, and the deceived expectations of Israel as to how such a forgiveness was to come about. The only possibility was perceived to be through a stricter adherence to the law - which already condemned her, and anyway provided no covering sacrifice for deliberate, wilful rebellion.
The offer of forgiveness of sins, as modelled and given by Jesus, pointed to a fulfilment of Israel’s eschatological expectations in himself, and in his followers - but not in a way that Israel either wanted or could perceive and receive. His death on a cross was not in a separate category from his life and ministry, and brought the issue of God’s eschatological purposes within Jesus to a climax. His resurrection provided the imprimatur of God’s approval, and the dawning of the new creation.
The command to "be fruitful and multiply" raises the question of what ‘fruitfulness’ and ‘multiplication’ could have meant. Prior to Genesis 3, there was no problem - procreation would ipso facto have entailed a spreading of the unbroken ‘image of God’ throughout the world in a relationship of love and trust between the man and woman and their creator. After Genesis 3, such a simple project was no longer straightforwardly possible. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out. So alternative measures had to be introduced - which, to cut quite a few generations short, leads to the elective purpose of God working through individuals and families until the coming of the one who is called ‘the seed’ - ie Jesus himself.
It’s also not rocket science to see that when ‘the seed’ had come, the original creation-wide purposes of God could be put into effect. There is now a ‘new creation’ carried in the lives of those for whom Jesus is Lord, by his Spirit within them, to be proclaimed and introduced into the lives of those who inhabit the entire creation - that is, the created, inhabited world. In this way, the Abrahamic promise will be fulfilled, and the original creation mandate can also be fulfilled in away that is consistent with God’s character and values.
I think I understand what you mean by a ‘humanistic’ reading of the scriptures, but I think you are misusing the word ‘humanism’ in so doing, and it seems strange to read the Hebrew scriptures by rescinding a central assumption of the writers - that God exists, and was working his purposes out through the history of his people.
Isn’t it time you abandoned your own humanistic fence-sitting, and plopped yourself down on the right side of the fence - where Jesus is Lord, and you also become a bearer of the new creation, as opposed to worrying about what happens to all those who might not be part of it?
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Peter, you responded more quickly than I expected. I realized I had been disingenuous in my response to the altar call at the end of your preceding comment, and I was hoping to clarify my misleading remark before you answered. But I think it’s not too late.
None of the options I outlined linking the Creation to the Gospel would compel me to join up. I am committed to a secular outlook, as I’ve said on this blog before. What interests me is whether the secular and Christian subsets of humanity can cohabit in an atmosphere of mutual respect. As I’ve insisted repeatedly on this post, there are variants of Christianity which regard Israel and the Church not merely as a new creation, separate from the old one, but as the authentic manifestation of the original creation. This particular variant of Christianity is both anti-humanistic and nationalistically racist. I’ve repeated myself on this point several times on this thread, hopefully illustrating precisely what I mean by it. You clarified your position that you personally do not uphold this position, and I understood your clarification.
Why you insist that I haven’t understood you stimulates my urge to psychologize. Maybe it’s important for you not to arrive at an agreement with a self-professed unbeliever. You insist on calling me to Jesus at the end of every exchange, whereas you rarely if ever play evangelist with anyone else. I suppose I should regard this gesture as indicative of your concern for my well-being, but frankly I interpret it as a rhetorical dodge — as if my non-membership among the elect makes my interpretations less valid. You’ll note that I have never encouraged you to join me on the left side of the fence — I expect if I did you would find it offensive, even if I did so with the best of intentions.
I generally agree with your interpretation of sin and the gospel in your most recent comment, just as I did in the one preceding it. Regarding the psychology of sin in Genesis 3, I encourage you to read (if you haven’t already) this comment and the one that follows it, which I previously contributed to a different OST post. Briefly, I think that Eve was exhibiting the phenomenon that Paul describes in Romans 7:7-8:
The command not to eat of the forbidden tree stimulated that very desire in Eve. Note that the desire to transgress preceded "the Fall," illustrating not only the law’s ineffectiveness in producing righteousness but, paradoxically, its tendency to provoke exactly the opposite effect. Why? There’s of course the oft-repeated observation telling someone not to think about a pink elephant invariably conjures that very thought in the other person’s mind. But then there’s also the factor mentioned by the serpent: that which is prohibited is reserved for the gods alone, so performing the prohibited act makes you more godlike. This desire to emulate the gods need not be motivated by envy or competition — it might derive from admiration, as when a child emulates his father by sneaking a sip of beer from the old man’s glass. Paul repeatedly insists that the law, while good, is useless for attaining righteousness or justification; Eve offered the first case example. One could make a case that the desire to do that which is reserved for God is a manifestation of God’s image in man. This is why the Law is useful only for children and slaves rather than heirs, as Paul says in Galatians 4.
I think the relationship between law and sin is a fascinating topic which I’d be happy to explore at greater length if you like. Frankly, it interests me more than continuing to disagree about the relationship between "be fruitful and multiply" and "go into all the world making disciples of all nations" — which, as I’ve said a couple times now, isn’t really much of a disagreement between the two of us.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
John - your comment on Eve experiencing covetous desire before she disobeyed the command and ate the fruit is something that John Milton had observed, and included in his highly psychologically acute presentation of the couple in Paradise Lost. Of course, the desire to sin is not the act in itself; Eve could have noticed the culpability of the desire and resisted the action towards which it was tending. This would have led to her personal development, from a state of innocence to a state of moral virtue - something which has been the subject of a conversation between us a long time ago.
But methinks you do protest, like the Queen in Hamlet’s play within a play, too much. It is obvious that, like Paul, your conscience is causing you to ‘kick against the goads’. I can spot an anxious sinner at 300 paces. I will forward you a copy of the sinner’s prayer (free of charge). Trained counsellors will be on hand on a neighbourhood basis. The direct debit mandates and bankers’ order forms for tithing into my ministry will follow by geographic mail. You are not obliged to join a denominational church, but if you do, Sunday attendance requirements are now somewhat more relaxed than they have been, and twice a month will be adequate. Joining a home bible study group will be an essential sign of your inward commitment and state of grace. Apart from that, life can carry on pretty much as normal.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Yes, that’s all very amusing, Peter, and I may at some point have to discuss with you my scheme for establishing an online confessional. But please try to restrain your flippancy a bit longer, inasmuch we find ourselves facing serious exegetical and theological issues.
As you rightly observe, "the desire to sin is not the act in itself;" however, as Paul observes in Romans 7, the law itself stimulates the desire. There’s no need to attribute this paradoxical psychological effect to a corruption of human nature resulting from the Fall, inasmuch as the law-desire connection was already working in Eve’s psyche prior to the Fall. She chose to sin, but her desire, stimulated by the prohibition, inclined her will toward sinning. We’re all familiar with this phenomenon, and so was Paul.
Augustine tried to make sense of Paul’s difficult teaching in Romans 5 that Adam’s sin and death affected all men thereafter. We could regard Augustine’s doctrine of original sin as a sort of Lamarckian inheritance theory, whereby not only the tendency to sin but sinfulness itself was transmitted genetically down through the generations. Actually his idea was a little stranger than that, a little more gnostic in tenor: he regarded all men as already present within the first man, so that whatever happened to Adam happened also to all his progeny. But I don’t think this strange theory of biologically transmitted moral corruption is a necessary interpretation of the text. And here we have our friend Andrew to thank, with his insistence on distinguishing the individual from the collective, in order to approach what might be a better reading.
Throughout Romans 5:12-21 Paul consistently contrasts "the one" with "the many" and with "all men." "The grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to the many" — but also "by the transgression of the one (i.e., Adam) the many died" (Rom. 5:15). When Paul says that through Christ the many were justified (v. 16) and made righteous (v. 17&19), he doesn’t mean that the many became righteous in the same way that Christ is righteous; he means that the many were "reckoned" as righteous (Gal. 3:6). The many benefitted from the one’s righteousness because together they formed a collective, and so God regarded the whole collective as righteous.
This one-for-many principle applied with Israel: the sins of any one person would be charged to the account of all, subjecting the whole nation to judgment. Likewise, repentance and atonement made by one person could benefit all, diverting God’s punishment on the nation. In Romans 5 "the many" who collectively suffer the consequences of Adam’s sin include not only the nation of Israel but the entire human species. So Adam’s sin was charged to the collective human account, such that the whole species was reckoned as sinful. And God’s punishment for this one man’s sin — death — likewise was administered to the entire species, such that each and every human eventually dies.
The idea of human collective guilt and punishment in Adam is consistent with collective Israelite guilt and punishment under the Law of Moses. This reading of Romans 5 doesn’t require any sort of genetic corruption of the species that would have rendered us intrinsically sinful or more prone to sinning in a way that wasn’t true prior to the Fall. We all have a tendency to sin, but it’s the same tendency that Adam and Eve manifested before they actually sinned. And each of us dies not because each of us has inherited a sinful nature but because as a collective we are all subjected to the punishment levied against the first sinner. According to this reading we’re as fully human as Adam and Eve ever were.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
John - no, I disagree that the prohibition aroused in Eve a desire to sin, or covet the fruit. You forget the involvement of a third party, a talking snake (or literally ‘shining one’ - which may or may not have been a literal snake at that point - but let that be). It was at any rate the snake, working on Eve’s mind and imagination, who suggested thoughts about the fruit which apparently had not occurred to her before, and enticed her to sin.
There are remarkable parallels between Romans 7:7-12, and Genesis 3:1-7, and it is difficult not to think that we are being invited to see Israel’s experience under the law as a recapitulation, in some senses, of Eden. There are also strong contrasts with Eden - notably in the predispositions of the Eden pair and Israel.
Did Paul intend us to believe that the law aroused sinful desires? This suggestion is an inference from Romans 7:8 - "But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire." I’m not sure that the psychological interpretation quite fits with what Paul is saying here. In the first place, the passage is highly metaphorical and hyperbolic, with its personification of sin. But it is sin, and not the law, which produces "every kind of covetous desire". I think it is pressing the issue too far, and certainly misinterpreting Paul’s consistent statements about the law, to say that the law aroused sin - as a kind of psychological phenomenon.
To provide a further gloss on the passage, I think Paul is saying in an arresting way that the law produced an awareness of sin, and also saying how extensively sin had run beneath the surface of his own life, and that of Israel, as it does in everybody’s life. Realisation of God’s moral requirements has this effect, not simply for Israel - or here, for Paul. Once awareness of sin is created, the ‘victim’ dies, (in a metaphoric sense), because his/her conscience, formerly free from the awareness of sin, is now weighed down by it. In a less metaphoric sense, the commandment puts the victim to death literally, since this is the consequence of the broken commandment, just as it was for Adam and Eve. They, and we, have been given the death sentence - which is both biological and moral.
So no, I don’t think Paul is saying here that the law stimulates the desire to sin; and our erstwhile parents did not have a latent tendency to sin which was aroused by the commandment. For that, we have to look at the snake’s nefarious participation in the narrative. Unless you want to be super-subtle and argue that the snake was simply a projection of the workings of the inner psyche of Adam & Eve. Hmmmm. (I’m throwing you a psychological lifeline here, John).
It’s for these reasons that I can’t share the conclusion to your summary of Romans 5 - that we are just as fully human as Adam & Eve, and there was just as much proclivity to sin in them as there is in us. I think there were very significant genetic consequences to the primal sin - which, in addition to environmental and spiritual considerations (a reorientation in the relationship of God to humanity as a result of the fall), do have a material influence on us in relation to sin.
There is always something limited about any attempted analysis of precisely how sin is transmitted, however. It certainly isn’t primarily genetic, since sin is a moral, not a physical phenomenon. The reality is in what you see in the world, which I see in my own children, and in myself. We grow up in a world where the possibilities of peace and harmony are constantly distorted by the reality of conflict and disorder, and this is not just environmental, but deeply personal. The innocence of childhood gives way to the experience of adult life - for better and worse. Some of the profoundest and most moving expressions of human art and literature have taken this is as their subject.
I’m not entirely sure how you are interpreting the paired contrasts of Romans 5. Although Paul uses "the many" and "all" as qualifiers for both sin and redemption, at first almost bracketing them in their influence and extent, the precise comparison breaks down if pressed beyond its rhetorical function. Sin affects all, irrespective of their choice. The "free gift" may be available to all, but it is received only by faith - a qualification which Paul has made very clear elsewhere.
The "free gift" is not, in that sense, an imputed phenomenon (or reckoned, to use a better translation) in the sense that the beneficiaries have no personal part to play in receiving it. Likewise sin is not simply attributed even where the guilty party has no personal culpability. Paul emphasises that all are guilty, because all have sinned. If that is not made clear enough in Romans 5, it was certainly the theme of Romans 1-3, where there is no sense at all of collective imputation of guilt where individuals may have been personally guilt-free.
Statements made in a discussion like this need constant and careful qualification. So I’m not disputing that there was a collective guilt attributed to national Israel - even where individuals may not have had a personal part to play in Israel’s offences. The whole nation was awaiting a "forgiveness of sins" - which would be characterised by certain eschatological phenomena. There is a collective guilt attributed to humanity - in which the entire race suffers from the withdrawal or absence of certain kinds of benefit or blessing from God. But this does not remove the participation in that guilt through many kinds of personal sin - which are real, and not simply imputed or reckoned in a non-personal way.
Your discussion of Romans 5 takes the original discussion of Genesis 3 and Romans 7 into much broader territory, and while I have given my views, I may not entirely have captured your own.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
" John - no, I disagree"
Don’t you wish that at least once in awhile somebody would give you credit for offering at least the seed of a good new idea? In light of your immediate and repeated rejection of what I’ve put forward there’s no reason for me to bedevil you with more thorough explorations. So I’ll limit myself to finding something good to say about your response, meanwhile hoping that perhaps someone else who’s following this discussion finds something fruitful or at least provocative to build on.
Right, the serpent did entice Eve to sin. I think it’s fair to say that these enticements would have fallen on deaf ears had not Eve found something attractive about them, at least on an unconscious level, even if, as you infer from the text, these enticements hadn’t yet come consciously to her mind.
Right, there are remarkable parallels between Romans 7:7-12 and Genesis 3:1-7. I believe these parallels could be fruitfully explored when investigating the interrelationships between law, desire and sin. And I also agree with you that "it is difficult not to think that we are being invited to see Israel’s experience under the law as a recapitulation, in some senses, of Eden." I’d encourage us both not to decline this invitation — which might mean setting aside the contrasts between the two until the similarities have come more clearly into focus.
Right, sin is a moral phenomenon rather than a physical one. As you rightly observe, powerful personal and societal forces often lure us away from goodness.
Right, Paul does say that the Law arouses an awareness of sin. In Romans 7 Paul says that the sinful passions were aroused by the Law (v. 5); that we’ve been released from the Law to which we were bound (v. 6); that apart from the Law sin is dead (v. 8); that apart from Law Paul was alive, but when the Law came sin came alive and he died (v.9); that the Law itself resulted in death for Paul (v. 10). The Law, though good, just isn’t very helpful in making people good. Instead the Law brings to our conscious awareness our unconscious desire to do that which it forbids. The way out, Paul insists not only here but consistently throughout his epistles, isn’t to continue subjecting oneself to "the Law of sin and of death" (Rom. 8:2), trying either through natural or supernatural effort to comply, but rather to die to the Law itself. "For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God" (Gal. 3:19). I hope we’re in agreement at least this far in grasping Paul’s indictment not just of sinfulness in man but also of the Law as a remedy.
I agree with you about the universality of sin. Paul says not only that all men fall collectively under condemnation of Adam’s sin and thus are sentenced to mortality regardless of their own sins, but also that each one who comes into awareness of God’s laws is guilty of sin, beginning with Adam and extends through all subsequent generations. In the book of Romans Paul consistently points out that awareness of Law invariably brings with it awareness of sin, and that this awareness does us no good in trying to overcome it.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
I was only trying to be helpful!
The idea that laws arouse a contrary desire to break them, just because they are laws, and that this was true of Adam & Eve isn’t a new one; I just don’t think it was true of Eve (or Adam). Also, I don’t get an urge to break the speed limit each time I see a speed restriction sign - but I might break the limit (but not excessively) if I think I can get away with it and I’m in a hurry.
This led to me once being pulled over and cautioned on my motorcycle (actually for jumping a traffic light when it was changing to red). That almost happened again the other day when I sneaked across the lights slightly too late (in a car this time - a 1998 Nissan Primera Estate) - and as I pulled away, I noticed a police patrol car sitting right behind me in the nearside lane. I was waiting for the notice of my fine and three points on my licence to fall through the letter box for the next week. To my relief it never came. But I digress.
Of course Eve’s temptation didn’t fall on deaf ears - but that’s the whole point of temptation. In Eve’s case, what was contrary to the command, and actually would prove to be devastatingly catastrophic, and totally unreasonable when measured against higher considerations, was presented in a way that was attractive to her: not because it was inherently sinful, or she had an inner urge to break laws, but because it seemed to offer benefits to her. It actually appealed to the attractions of sight, mind and appetite - the fruit was presented as looking good, it was presented as offering wisdom, and she was hungry. God was made to appear unreasonable. There was a subtle process of corruption - which presents in cameo a psychologically profound exploration of how temptation works.
The consequences of the act of disobedience are an equally profound psychological exploration of the consequences of sin. Fear and guilt replace love and trust. Accusation and blameshifting replace relational harmony and faithfulness. God’s presence is seen as something to be avoided in place of delight in God’s presence. All these psychological consequences of sin in our primal parents are as up to date in today’s personal and societal pathology as if it happened yesterday.
I think we are in total agreement on the role of the Law as you outline it in your penultimate paragraph. Except that I don’t think the Law was ever given as a remedy for sin, and no more worked in that respect than living by our best intentions and conforming to our highest moral principles works as a lifestyle strategy now. At least, not if we are honest with ourselves.
Of course, today there are different arguments about why the Law was given to Israel, the most favoured being that it was simply intended to be a boundary marker for God’s people under the Old Covenant, to be replaced by the Spirit as the boundary marker of the New Covenant. Since there is no evidence of anyone then or today suffering moral torment and mental anguish over their failure to live up to the Law, either in historic Israel or contemporary Judaism, it is assumed that the role of the Law in awakening conscience to its moral failure was not part of the Law’s intended use and the Protestant Reformation was based on a fallacy.
The great exception to this rule would be Paul in Romans 7 (but not previously when he was hacking Christians to death, and murder or being an accomplice to murder is not mentioned in Romans 7 as one of the sins that troubled his conscience). Maybe also Josiah when the book of the Law was discovered. Maybe Isaiah, when God revealed himself to him. So maybe the Law did have this intention. Maybe Moses when he found the people of Israel worshipping the golden calf. Maybe - this argument could go on and on - but I’m arguing with myself again, aren’t I? Yes you are. So stop it.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Okay, let’s build on our agreements. Humans are subject to all sorts of temptations. One could even contend that a law is worth stating only if it restricts what some people might want to do: eat tasty fruit, become more godlike, drive fast down the highway. Eve was tempted and succumbed; you and I have had experiences similar to hers. Is it necessary to assert that Eve was entirely free to resist temptation whereas we are hampered by a form of inner moral turpitude? This question is more directly related to my first comment on this post (I no longer recall the subject of the original post itself); namely, whether Christians regard themselves as more fully human than everybody else. If Eve’s/Adam’s sin made everyone morally depraved, and if becoming a Christian removes that innate depravity, then Christians can claim not only a legal pardon from punishment but the possession of an essential, ontological, God-given moral freedom that non-Christians lack.
My sense is that evangelicals tradionally have followed Augustine and Calvin in asserting that personal salvation results also in a personal regeneration that removes this innate depravity which all people somehow inherited as a result of the Fall. Part of my motivation in revisiting Romans 5 is to explore alternative interpretations of the only Biblical text that even hints at inherited depravity. The Old Testament writers never refer to it, and neither does Jesus. Even Paul doesn’t talk about inherited sinfulness elsewhere.
So what think you, Peter: are Christians intrinsically less depraved than everybody else by virtue of Christ having removed that particular adverse consequence of the Fall? If so, why do you think so? Please limit your answer to 500 words. Ready? You may begin.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
John - I never really pay much attention to the overarching objectives of threads - I get too interested in the minutiae of the immediate context. Theological hedonism, I suppose. A brief response to your comments - which may slightly exceed the 500 word limit which you set me in your assignment. Please return the essay to me fully marked and annotated before the weekend, in my cyber pigeon-hole, with some indication of the rating I can expect in the theological inquisition to which you are subjecting me.
"Is it really necessary to assert that Eve was entirely free to resist temptation, whereas we are hampered by a form of inner moral turpitude?"
You can take Eve’s experiences as a paradigm of how temptation works for everyone, certainly. It goes beyond that, however, expressing the ultimate assumptions of all temptation, in relation to what is happening within the subject tempted (to sin), and how succumbing to temptation drastically reorientates the subject towards God.
But do Christians regard themselves as more fully human than everybody else? The question assumes a comparison within the Christian subject to the rest of humanity. I think the question should really be posed in terms of self-comparison. I’ve no doubt Christians regard themselves in some senses as being more human, or becoming more human, than the person they used to be, or the person they were becoming before they believed. But in comparison with others - who can tell? Who knows apart from God what is really going on within the complex and often hidden recesses of personality? Who is anyone, apart from God, to judge such things?
That such self-comparison can validly be made is precisely for the reasons which you suggest are the outcome of the thinking of certain theologians. Actually, the reasons are central to biblical theology, and are not the sole domain of Augustine, Calvin or evangelicals. The technical term regeneration is a biblical word, and it points to the central historical event of Pentecost. At this historical climax, the elusive Spirit became a gift which was offered to all believers in Jesus as Lord. The gift is "the promise of the Father" - Luke 24:29, the birthright of all who, like those in Acts 2, heard the message, repented and believed - Acts 2:39.
The Spirit is not merely one of empowerment for service to God, just as Peter was empowered to speak boldly and effectively on the day of Pentecost, but also one of inner ethical transformation. This latter consequence of the Spirit can be deduced from the Spirit’s nature - which is holy. The ethical consequences are spelt out, for instance, in Galatians 5, where they are contrasted with their counterpart, "the works of the flesh" - which refers, perhaps rather starkly, to the outcome of a life lived purely by the self-energising motives and effort of the human subject - Galatians 5:19-21. The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is spelt out in Galatians 5:22-23.
The contrast of the words "works" and "fruit" in Galatians 5 is significant. "Works" always suggests something which is produced by self-energised acitivity in Paul. "Fruit" suggests the outcome of something which which owes its origin to another source - in this case, the Spirit. It is produced by the Spirit within the person, rather than by the person as a self-motivated and energised moral agent.
You use phrases like "inner moral turpitude" and "depravity" to describe the state perceived by Christians (of a certain theological persusaion) of those who do not hold the same beliefs as themselves. The phrases are of course chosen provocatively, to suggest a certain self-righteousness, a moral judgmentalism, even something akin to racist self-distancing from those outside the pale of the holiness they enjoy. I think it is more helpful to look not only at the inward moral condition in which a person is perceived to be, but also at what that person is becoming, as result of the choices they are making through the faith they espouse. The word depravity itself was originally chosen by theologians for precisely this purpose. Its meaning, from the Latin depravus, has the sense of trajectory, a moving away from a norm, a distortion or crookedness afflicting the original.
It also goes without saying that everyone lives their lives out on the basis of some form of overarching faith, whether it is explicitly articulated or not. It is undeniable that even outside a frame of reference of faith in God, moral choices have consequences in the lives of those making such choices. We respect and approve the consequences in the character of those who make ethically admirable choices for themselves, and observe the deleterious consequences of poor or reprehensible choices in the character of those who make them - sometimes affecting many generations to come, in both cases.
So do Christians - not just evangelicals or those who hold to the faith of Augustine or Calvin - regard themselves as removed from "this innate depravity which all people somehow inherited as a result of the Fall"? And is the concept of "innate depravity" anywhere suggested in the bible apart from Paul, and Romans 5 in particular?
To address the second question first. It may not be spelled out anywhere else quite as it is in Romans 5, but a theme of the entire scriptures from Genesis 3 onwards is of the constant moral failure of humanity, particularly in relation to their sense of obligation to God. The failures come to a climax in Israel, and the condition they perceived themselves to be in at the time of Jesus, or in 2nd Temple Judaism under first Greek then Roman oppression. The very question as to why Israel had failed is at the heart of Paul’s theology. It is a failure, as he describes it in Romans 1-3, which afflicts all humanity, that is Jew and Gentile alike. It is in this context that his assertion of the covenant faithfulness of God to his creation lies at the heart of what he saw to have been fulfilled in Jesus.
It is remarkable that the bible, uniquely amongst sacred writings, takes such a severely critical view even of its most exemplary characters. It spares no punches. The people of God above all are subjected to the most thorough-going exposition of moral failure. That is the background to the bible’s interpretation of history, and one of its main running themes.
So do Christians now regard themselves as somehow removed from this historical reality of mankind’s innate tendencies? In one sense the answer is yes - because of the death of Jesus on the cross - providing, as a free gift, and by identification with him, entire freedom from the catastrophic and inescapable workings of sin, which the scriptures have painstakingly set out as a central feature and phenomenon of human history and experience. Baptism is the central faith event in the life of the disciple which dramatises this truth. But in what way are Christians removed from the historic reality of sin?
The emphasis must always fall on what Christians are becoming as much as what they are - since the redemptive gift of life, which Paul describes in Romans 5, is given to a people who do not as yet enjoy the full experience of what the gift promised. It is a downpayment, or guarantee, not the full amount. There has as yet to be the full adoption as sons, which comes through the resurrection, and the complete renewal of the created world as an environment for resurrected beings. But the events which promise this future are decisive, as far as the life of faith is concerned. Meanwhile for now, in the interim of this present life, there is always the possibility and reality of the Christian returning to the self-energised source of living, biblically described as the flesh, which is not simply an abandonment to physical pleasures as a strategy for living, but involves the whole person. But this is neither an inevitable occurrence, nor need it be continuous.
I hope you will see in this very brief, limited response to your question, that it is almost impossible for Christians honestly to view themselves in terms of the virtuous comparison or contrast with others which you are suggesting. However, it is not out of the question, in a more general sense, to make the contrast, since it is founded on undeniable theological realities and experiences, and since Peter himself could say: "Save yourself from this crooked generation" - Acts 2:40; and Paul himself says similar things. In saying that, there was of course a particular historical context in which the statement was made, but it has a continuing, if secondary application, in my opinion, to all times.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
First let me commend you for your altogether excellent discourse on regeneration, to which I’ll respond in more detail later. (Perhaps someone else would like to join the discussion?) But first I’d like to point out that your response approached 1500 words, exceeding the limit threefold. The limit and the excess provide a meta-opportunity to talk about law.
You could regard the 500-word limit as a gesture of courtesy on my part, encouraging you not to overextend yourself. Or you could regard it as an indicator of my own laziness as a reader. If in writing your response you were taking the limit seriously, you likely would have exceeded it just enough to register your independence but not enough to incur the wrath of the law enforcers — much as drivers in the US (I don’t know about the UK) habitually drive 5 to 10 miles per hour above the speed limit. Instead it seems that the length of your response was dictated not by an artificial limit but by what you wanted to say and what needed to be said — not by "law" but by "spirit." Excellence becomes its own motive force and its own measure of success.
Re: Wandering from the forgotten ways
Peter (Wilkinson) comments:
“It is remarkable that the bible, uniquely amongst sacred writings, takes such a severely critical view even of its most exemplary characters. It spares no punches. The people of God above all are subjected to the most thorough-going exposition of moral failure. That is the background to the bible’s interpretation of history, and one of its main running themes.”
How true, and how emblematic of the human condition. Recognizing our inherent imperfections and imperfectness is central to being able to acknowledge our perfect creator, Jesus in particular, and God’s plan of redemption for all mankind through Jesus’ coming and sacrifice. Beeyoooootiful!!
“So do Christians now regard themselves as somehow removed from this historical reality of mankind’s innate tendencies? In one sense the answer is yes - because of the death of Jesus on the cross - providing, as a free gift, and by identification with him, entire freedom from the catastrophic and inescapable workings of sin, which the scriptures have painstakingly set out as a central feature and phenomenon of human history and experience. Baptism is the central faith event in the life of the disciple which dramatises this truth. But in what way are Christians removed from the historic reality of sin?”
Followers of Christ can NEVER remove themselves from the “historic reality of sin.” We sin daily, hourly, even minute to minute. That’s just being honest. Walking out a sanctified and righteous life requires CONSTANT acknowledgement of our sin, repentance, and a sincere, Holy Spirit