Original sin.

JAL · Oct 16, 2017

Ron Gurley said:
Can you answer the "Why's" of God?

Job 11:7
“ Can you discover the depths of God?
Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?

Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the human heart; (spirit)
yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Isaiah 40:28
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding (wisdom?) no one can fathom.

Zechariah 12: 1b (NASB)
Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and
forms the SPIRIT of man within him,

1 Corinthians 2: 6-10
...but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery,
the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory;
the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood;...
For to us God revealed them (things unseen) through the Spirit; (God the Holy Spirit)
for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God....

If your response here is that God's ways are beyond our understanding, it won't suffice. Allow me to explain.

Suppose God tells me to inject a poison into someone. At the moment it seems to me cruel because I don't know the final outcome - in this sense God's ways are beyond our understanding. Turns out later that, in the case of this patient, the poison served as an antidote to a fatal disease, saving his life.

The difficulty lies in my not knowing the final outcome. But we DO know the final outcome of this world. Everyone suffer and then:
(1) Many will go to heaven.
(2) Many will go to hell.
Therefore, since we know the final outcome, we CAN evaluate the present state of affairs. Based on that final outcome, is it good or necessary that innocent infants starve to death? Is it a maximal show of God's kindness? I think not.

In 2,000 years no one has solved this, but it's easily resolved by simply accepting the version of original sin proposed in my first post.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
If your response here is that God's ways are beyond our understanding, it won't suffice. Allow me to explain.

Suppose God tells me to inject a poison into someone. At the moment it seems to me cruel because I don't know the final outcome - in this sense God's ways are beyond our understanding. Turns out later that, in the case of this patient, the poison served as an antidote to a fatal disease, saving his life.

The difficulty lies in my not knowing the final outcome. But we DO know the final outcome of this world. Everyone suffer and then:
(1) Many will go to heaven.
(2) Many will go to hell.
Therefore, since we know the final outcome, we CAN evaluate the present state of affairs. Based on that final outcome, is it good or necessary that innocent infants starve to death? Is it a maximal show of God's kindness? I think not.

In 2,000 years no one has solved this, but it's easily resolved by simply accepting the version of original sin proposed in my first post.

Ho-hum. Been there, replied that:

Quote
Though Augustine was convinced by the arguments of his earlier patristic peers, he made use of the apostle Paul’s letters, especially the one to the Romans, to develop his own ideas on original sin and guilt. Today, however, it is accepted that Augustine, who had never mastered the Greek language, misread Paul in at least one instance by using an inadequate Latin translation of the Greek original.

In Romans 5, Paul addresses the matter of sin. In verse 12 he states, “Therefore . . . sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (NRSV). Later in the chapter, Paul juxtaposes the sin of Adam with the righteousness of Christ: “Just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). In contrast to his contemporary theologians, Augustine drew from his reading of these scriptures that sin was passed biologically from Adam to all his descendants through the sexual act itself, thus equating sexual desire with sin. But why should he have reached this interpretation when marital sexual relations in Jewish society at the time of Christ and Paul were considered honorable and good?

Augustine’s outlook on sex was distorted by ideas from the world outside the Bible. Because so much philosophy was based on dualism, in which the physical was categorized as evil but the spiritual as good, some philosophers idealized the celibate state. Sexual relations were physical and therefore evil.

Augustine’s association with Neoplatonic philosophers led him to introduce their outlook within the church. This had its effect in the development of doctrine. For example, Jesus was considered immaculately conceived—without sin in that His Father was God. But because His mother, Mary, had a human father, she suffered the effect of original sin. In order to present Jesus Christ as a perfect offspring without any inherited sin from either parent, the church had to find a way to label Mary as sinless. They did this by devising the doctrine of her immaculate conception, though this inevitably leads to further questions.

Other babies were not so fortunate. Some eight centuries later the Catholic theologian Anselm extended the implications of Augustine’s concept of original sin and claimed that babies who died, did so as sinners; as sinners, they had no access to eternal life but were condemned to eternal damnation.

The world from which Paul came had a very different view of sexual relations, especially within marriage. Sex was not evil; it was part of the physical creation that God had decreed was good (Genesis 1:31). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews supports this view in describing the marital bed as “undefiled”—that is, pure or sacred; in other words, the sexual act did not impair a person’s relationship with God (Hebrews 13:4). The apostle Paul takes the idea further in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he instructs married couples not to defraud one another but to render appropriate conjugal dues. He states that in the sexual relationship each partner should focus on providing benefit to the other, not just on his or her own satisfaction. Hence Augustine’s view of sex as sin does not match New Testament teaching. Nor does it coincide with the Old Testament statement that a child does not carry its father’s sin (Ezekiel 18:19–20).

Further, Paul would have rejected Augustine’s idea of biological transmission. Paul presents a scenario in which humanity is held captive by a spirit being who enslaves them to sin (2 Corinthians 4:4–6; Ephesians 2:1–2). According to Paul, the entire world is held captive to “the prince of the power of the air,” or Satan. Paul mentions that the human spirit can be subject to either the spirit of the world or the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:6–14). He also warns Christians that their battle with sin is against spiritual, not physical, forces

The Original View of Original Sin

..........................
Quote
And behind Augustine’s anthropology (understanding of humanity), which is outlined in Scot’s post, is a simple misunderstanding of one word in the Bible, a preposition consisting of just two letters. Scot is writing about the New Perspective on Paul, an interesting issue. But my point here is not about that, but about how a misleading Bible translation has led Christian theology seriously astray for 1600 years.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was a great thinker and church leader. As a young man he had left his Christian background and become a Manichaean, a follower of an anti-Christian dualistic religion; eventually he came back to the Christian faith. But he was not a great linguist. He could speak and understand well only his native Latin, not Greek. And so for his understanding of the Bible he had to rely on translations into Latin.

Doug Chaplin has recently explained how in Romans 5:12

Augustine took Paul’s phrase “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” following the Vulgate “in quo omnes peccaverunt” to be “in whom [Adam] all sinned”.

(The Greek can be transliterated ef’ ho pantes hemarton.) Well, Augustine didn’t actually use the Vulgate, which was being translated during his lifetime, but the sometimes not very accurate Old Latin translations. But his Latin version seems to have been similar to the Vulgate here. Doug continues:

the Augustinian interpretation of Paul’s “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” as meaning “in whom all sinned” makes it the most disastrous preposition in history. All modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.”

More precisely, “the most disastrous preposition” is ἐφ᾽ ef’, a contracted form of epimeaning “on”. The Greek phrase ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ef’ ho literally means “on which”, or possibly “on whom”, but is commonly used to mean “because”, or perhaps “in that”. The problem is that the Latin rendering of ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in quo, is ambiguous between “in which” and “in whom” (I’m not sure if it can also mean simply “because” or “in that”), and Augustine understood it as meaning “in whom”, i.e. “in Adam”.

So, according to Augustine all sinned “in Adam”, which he understood as meaning that because Adam sinned every other human being, each of his descendants, is counted as a sinner. This is his doctrine of “original sin”, that every human is born a sinner and deserves death because of it. He may have taken up this idea because it agreed with his former Manichaean theology. This teaching is fundamental to most Protestant as well as Roman Catholic teaching today. For example, it underlies the Protestant (not just Calvinist) teaching of total depravity, that the unsaved person can do nothing good, a teaching for which there is little biblical basis apart from Augustine’s misunderstanding which was followed by Calvin.

Augustine's mistake about original sin - Gentle Wisdom

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Ho-hum. Been there replied that:

Quote
And behind Augustine’s anthropology (understanding of humanity), which is outlined in Scot’s post, is a simple misunderstanding of one word in the Bible, a preposition consisting of just two letters. Scot is writing about the New Perspective on Paul, an interesting issue. But my point here is not about that, but about how a misleading Bible translation has led Christian theology seriously astray for 1600 years.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was a great thinker and church leader. As a young man he had left his Christian background and become a Manichaean, a follower of an anti-Christian dualistic religion; eventually he came back to the Christian faith. But he was not a great linguist. He could speak and understand well only his native Latin, not Greek. And so for his understanding of the Bible he had to rely on translations into Latin.

Doug Chaplin has recently explained how in Romans 5:12

Augustine took Paul’s phrase “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” following the Vulgate “in quo omnes peccaverunt” to be “in whom [Adam] all sinned”.

(The Greek can be transliterated ef’ ho pantes hemarton.) Well, Augustine didn’t actually use the Vulgate, which was being translated during his lifetime, but the sometimes not very accurate Old Latin translations. But his Latin version seems to have been similar to the Vulgate here. Doug continues:

the Augustinian interpretation of Paul’s “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” as meaning “in whom all sinned” makes it the most disastrous preposition in history. All modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.”

More precisely, “the most disastrous preposition” is ἐφ᾽ ef’, a contracted form of epimeaning “on”. The Greek phrase ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ef’ ho literally means “on which”, or possibly “on whom”, but is commonly used to mean “because”, or perhaps “in that”. The problem is that the Latin rendering of ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in quo, is ambiguous between “in which” and “in whom” (I’m not sure if it can also mean simply “because” or “in that”), and Augustine understood it as meaning “in whom”, i.e. “in Adam”.

So, according to Augustine all sinned “in Adam”, which he understood as meaning that because Adam sinned every other human being, each of his descendants, is counted as a sinner. This is his doctrine of “original sin”, that every human is born a sinner and deserves death because of it. He may have taken up this idea because it agreed with his former Manichaean theology. This teaching is fundamental to most Protestant as well as Roman Catholic teaching today. For example, it underlies the Protestant (not just Calvinist) teaching of total depravity, that the unsaved person can do nothing good, a teaching for which there is little biblical basis apart from Augustine’s misunderstanding which was followed by Calvin.

Augustine's mistake about original sin - Gentle Wisdom

You're still trying to conflate my version with Augustine's even though mine is a corrective on all such historic versions. Nothing could be more ridiculous - and theologically childish. After all, almost ALL religions, and almost ALL religious doctrines, share strands of similarity. So what? It's the DIFFERENCES that really matter, that's what we discuss and debate. It is therefore theologically childish to keep asserting (the obvious fact) that my views have some similarities to those of Augustine - and a million other theologians.

What's really important here is:
(1) Does Augustine's view resolve the logical difficulties at issue in this discussion? No.
(2) Does my view do so? Yes.
(3) Does yours? No.
So can we stay on topic please?

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
You're still trying to conflate my version with Augustine's even though mine is a corrective on all such historic versions. Nothing could be more ridiculous - and theologically childish. After all, almost ALL religions, and almost ALL religious doctrines, share strands of similarity. So what? It's the DIFFERENCES that really matter, that's what we discuss and debate. It is therefore theologically childish to keep asserting (the obvious fact) that my views have some similarities to those of Augustine - and a million other theologians.

What's really important here is:
(1) Does Augustine's view resolve the logical difficulties at issue in this discussion? No.
(2) Does my view do so? Yes.
(3) Does yours? No.
So can we stay on topic please?

Apparently your view isn't original either. It's been trotted out and rebutted several times:

Quote
Traducianism: this is not one, but three doctrines.

1. Our souls are created by material and/or spiritual transmission from our parents. Thus we inherit a corrupt sinful nature (Rom 7)

2. Natural Headship: As Levi in a sense paid tithes to Melchizedek while Abraham's loins (Heb 7:9-10), we were guilty of the first sin by being in Adam's loins (Rom 5:12, 18,19).

3. By the same mechanism, we have guilt for our ancestor's sins.

Note: Someone can believe 1 alone, or 1 and 2 without 3. This tract is critical of 2 and 3 but says nothing about 1.

Famous Traducians were Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, Shedd, J. Edwards, Martin Luther, and eastern Orthodox leaders.

Rebuttal: Heb 7:9-10 refers to tithes and hereditary priesthood, and does not contradict guilt for only own sins in Ezekiel 18. Of course, since Adam, different people have committed additional sins. From a Traducianist viewpoint, exterminating Jews because of the sins of the ancestors made sense in Germany.

Humans are Blamed for Adam's Guilt?

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Apparently your view isn't original either. It's been trotted out and rebutted several times:

Quote

Traducianism: this is not one, but three doctrines.

1. Our souls are created by material and/or spiritual transmission from our parents. Thus we inherit a corrupt sinful nature (Rom 7)

2. Natural Headship: As Levi in a sense paid tithes to Melchizedek while Abraham's loins (Heb 7:9-10), we were guilty of the first sin by being in Adam's loins (Rom 5:12, 18,19).

3. By the same mechanism, we have guilt for our ancestor's sins.

Note: Someone can believe 1 alone, or 1 and 2 without 3. This tract is critical of 2 and 3 but says nothing about 1.

Famous Traducians were Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, Shedd, J. Edwards, Martin Luther, and eastern Orthodox leaders.

Rebuttal: Heb 7:9-10 refers to tithes and hereditary priesthood, and does not contradict guilt for only own sins in Ezekiel 18. Of course, since Adam, different people have committed additional sins. From a Traducianist viewpoint, exterminating Jews because of the sins of the ancestors made sense in Germany.

Humans are Blamed for Adam's Guilt?

Again, citing SIMILAR views when it's the DIFFERENCES that matter. See my previous post.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Again, citing SIMILAR views when it's the DIFFERENCES that matter. See my previous post.

It's not different. Same old same old.

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Since you think this citation by Doug Chaplin is so monumentally significant, I'll touch on it.

Augustine took Paul’s phrase “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” following the Vulgate “in quo omnes peccaverunt” to be “in whom [Adam] all sinned”.

(The Greek can be transliterated ef’ ho pantes hemarton.) Well, Augustine didn’t actually use the Vulgate, which was being translated during his lifetime, but the sometimes not very accurate Old Latin translations. But his Latin version seems to have been similar to the Vulgate here. Doug continues:

the Augustinian interpretation of Paul’s “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” as meaning “in whom all sinned” makes it the most disastrous preposition in history. All modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.”

Click to expand...

Either translation is fine with me, from a theological standpoint (I haven't studied the grammar). Both translations assert that 'all sinned' - WHEN did the infants of Paul's day sin? Those infants existing at the time he wrote those words? When did they sin if not in a previous life? Two main choices for that previous life:
(1) Preexistence in Adam.
(2) Preexistence prior to Adam.
But #1 seems to be the better choice, because Paul claims that sin entered the world through Adam.
Interesting, isn't it, that Paul did not say, "Sin entered the world through Eve"? I mean, she sinned first, right? Is Paul contradicting the facts? Not on my version of original sin. I said that Eve's soul was a physical fragment/subsection of Adam's soul. Therefore ALL sin entered the world through Adam's soul.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Since you think this citation by Doug Chaplin is so monumentally significant, I'll touch on it.

Either translation is fine with me, from a theological standpoint (I haven't studied the grammar). Both translations assert that 'all sinned' - WHEN did the infants of Paul's day sin? Those infants existing at the time he wrote those words? When did they sin if not in a previous life? Two main choices for that previous life:
(1) Preexistence in Adam.
(2) Preexistence prior to Adam.
But #1 seems to be the better choice, because Paul claims that sin entered the world through Adam.
Interesting, isn't it, that Paul did not say, "Sin entered the world through Eve"? I mean, she sinned first, right? Is Paul contradicting the facts? Not on my version of original sin. I said that Eve's soul was a physical fragment/subsection of Adam's soul. Therefore ALL sin entered the world through Adam's soul.

Doesn't require pre existence. All people eventually sinned.

In my example of a tax free zone, I never changed. I did the same actions in both zones. In one country, I was compliant, in the other I was in infraction.

The change is in the consequences, not in the nature, the anthropology.

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
It's not different. Same old same old.

Ignorance is bliss. The historic doctrine of traducianism (at the least the doctrine that was a topic of discussion among theologians for centuries) was held in tandem with an IMMATERIAL soul (where an immaterial soul is defined as a substance indivisible into parts) which is precisely the OPPOSITE of my position. The whole ESSENCE and CRUX of my position is the divisibility of Adam's MATERIAL soul into parts.

Traducianists were ACCUSED of tending toward materialism but didn't actually accept materialism with the possible exception of Tertullian, whose materialism was NOT part of the historic "Traducianism" in debate among the theologians.

Did Tertullian clearly articulate the same position that I have formulated? Possibly, although I don't think he did. (I need to research this further).

So your allegation that my view has been oft-discussed and oft-refuted is patently false.
You want to refute my view? Do it yourself. Don't sit back and insinuate that some else has already done so.

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Doesn't require pre existence. All people eventually sinned.

In my example of a tax free zone, I never changed. I did the same actions in both zones. In one country, I was compliant, in the other I was in infraction.

The change is in the consequences, not in the nature, the anthropology.

So the infants of Paul's day had already sinned - without preexistence? Can anyone make sense of this?

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
So the infants of Paul's day had already sinned - without preexistence? Can anyone make sense of this?

Those below twenty were not punished.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Ignorance is bliss. The historic doctrine of traducianism (at the least the doctrine that was a topic of discussion among theologians for centuries) was held in tandem with an IMMATERIAL soul (where an immaterial soul is defined as a substance indivisible into parts) which is precisely the OPPOSITE of my position. The whole ESSENCE and CRUX of my position is the divisibility of Adam's MATERIAL soul into parts.

Traducianists were ACCUSED of tending toward materialism but didn't actually accept materialism with the possible exception of Tertullian, whose materialism was NOT part of the historic "Traducianism" in debate among the theologians.

Did Tertullian clearly articulate the same position that I have formulated? Possibly, although I don't think he did. (I need to research this further).

So your allegation that my view has been oft-discussed and oft-refuted is patently false.
You want to refute my view? Do it yourself. Don't sit back and insinuate that some else has already done so.

Traducianism accepts material transmission.

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Those below twenty were not punished.

Interesting doctrine. Did Paul say so? Or did some theologian make it up?
Paul said:
(1) All have sinned. He did not say, "Those under 20 are exempt"
(2) He also implied that, on account of that sin, all needed Christ's atonement.
23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Rom 3:23-24).

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Traducianism accepts material transmission.

Don't mix apples and oranges. 'Transmission' is not ontology.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Interesting doctrine. Did Paul say so? Or did some theologian make it up?
Paul said:
(1) All have sinned. He did not say, "Those under 20 are exempt"
(2) He also implied that, on account of that sin, all needed Christ's atonement.
23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Rom 3:23-24).

The parents were punished for the sins of under aged children:

John 9:18-23
18The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, 19and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”20His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. 23For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

Most of the Letter to the Church in Rome is written to explain the huge puzzle: Has God's word failed?

Has God revoked His gift to Israel?

Are Gentiles God's new chosen People because they have not sinned like Israel sinned?

NO! ALL HAVE SINNED LIKE ISRAEL SINNED.

GOD CHOSE SINNERS!

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Don't mix apples and oranges. 'Transmission' is not ontology.

Does not follow jest becos you sez so. Prove it.

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
Does not follow jest becos you sez so. Prove it.

Prove what? Prove that classic Traducianism held to an immaterial soul? What's to prove? The term 'spirit' has historically been understood to mean immaterial substance by 99% of mainstream theologians. What more proof do you need?

But if you insist, here's a citation concerning historic Traducianism:
"The weakness of Traducianism is that it is unclear how an immaterial soul can be generated from another soul."
Traducianism | Theopedia

JAL · Oct 17, 2017

Wordkeeper said:
The parents were punished for the sins of under aged children:

John 9:18-23
18The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, 19and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”20His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. 23For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

Most of the Letter to the Church in Rome is written to explain the huge puzzle: Has God's word failed?

Has God revoked His gift to Israel?

Are Gentiles God's new chosen People because they have not sinned like Israel sinned?

NO! ALL HAVE SINNED LIKE ISRAEL SINNED.

GOD CHOSE SINNERS!

Really? This is what you base the doctrine of 20 on? If such scant foundation is deemed sufficient to build a whole doctrine, it's little wonder that church history has witnessed so many poor doctrines springing up.

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Prove what? Prove that classic Traducianism held to an immaterial soul? What's to prove? The term 'spirit' has historically been understood to mean immaterial substance by 99% of mainstream theologians. What more proof do you need?

But if you insist, here's a citation concerning historic Traducianism:
"The weakness of Traducianism is that it is unclear how an immaterial soul can be generated from another soul."
Traducianism | Theopedia

A spirit is what you have, a soul is what you are.

Adam's soul split into infinite pieces would mean a zillion mini Adams. Is that your teaching?

Wordkeeper · Oct 17, 2017

JAL said:
Really? This is what you base the doctrine of 20 on? If such scant foundation is deemed sufficient to build a whole doctrine, it's little wonder that church history has witnessed so many poor doctrines springing up.

How else can the angels of those wee ones always be orientated towards God?

And how would they always be in the possession of the Kingdom of God?

And why would they not spread their bones in the wilderness like those over twenty.

And again...

Original sin.

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