There is nothing illogical about: as it relates to sin/righteousness,
There is nothing illogical about: as it relates to sin/righteousness,
To the contrary, your intial view is illogical. But your rephrasing is also illogical.
NOW you say:
you have the moral power (will) to choose many moral actions; i.e., you are a moral free agent, but you do not have the moral power (will) to choose all moral actions
Yes, exactly a point I’ve made repeatedly about your argument, and it’s irrational.
“Free” logically means to be “free,” to mean “not under the control or in the power of somebody else; able to do what you want…free to do something…free from something…free of something” Oxford English Dictionary. Or as Plantinga stated, whose meaning is commensurate with Oxford’s entry for “free,” “a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform form the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.”
But your “free” moral agent, isn’t free, and you’ve specifically stated they aren’t free as some choices /actions are determined for them. Some choices/actions they MUST make. Some choices/actions are Forced upon them to make. For some choices/actions they cannot choose to do the opposite.
Hence, it doesn’t make any sense to characterize the as “free” a condition in which people Must choose/act and people are Forced to choose/act. To the contrary, what you’ve stated establishes people are not in fact free.
A necessary assumption of my rebuttal is to say people are “free” to choose/act means they are free to choose/act in regards to all their choices and actions. This is a rational assumption.
By way of example, Dicapario handcuffed to a pipe in Titantic was, by your logic, a “free” person to decide/act. After all, while handcuffed he can make many decisions, whether to squat, stand, yell, bang his handcuffs on the pipe, look out the window, kick his legs, scratch his head, etcetera. Yet, he isn’t free for some other choices, such as whether to leave or stay, when to eat, what to eat, whether to sit at the desk or on the floor, whether to lay down, etcetera. DiCaprio isn’t free as some choices/conduct is determined for him, forced upon him, while handcufffed to the pipe.
And your logic is to handcuff people to some choices/actions in which the person has no freedom to make a different choice/action and that isn’t to be “free,” regardless if they are “free” to make other choices/action.
Your reasoning is exactly the reasoning Plantinga derided with his prison analogy. Your reasoning leads to the illogical assessment the prisoner in chains, in a secure facility, under 24 hour surveillance, designed to keep people in, with armed men who may shoot a prisoner for attempting to escape, is “free” despite the fact some of their decisions/actions they must make, are forced upon them to make.
Your reasoning leads to those incongruences, to those irrational outcomes.
Your logic necessarily means peoples’ choice to sin or not to sin is determined for them. (I pause here to interject how your POV is unrefined. Which decision(s) to sin are determined? Is it the very first one? Are there any more? Did A and E have the ability to not sin but chose freely to do so?) The result of your logic is the loving and just God has condemned humanity to death for a sinful decision they didn’t make but were forced to make. The result of your is God created the conditions in which people MUST sin and is punishing people for what God did, creating people that MUST sin.
And as Macke observed, a loving and just God has the ability to create only those people who will always choose to not sin, just as God, by your logic, chose to create people whose decision to sin or not sin was already determined for them, and determined the people would choose sin. Well, if God can create people who are determined to sin, then God can create people who are determined to never sin and that way spare his creation from his wrath, a wrath that is the product of his own making in creating people determined to sin rather than creating people determined not to sin.
The only way to address Macke’s argument the God of the Bible is unjust and not all loving for allowing sin and evil is by the Free Will Defense of Plantinga, and his notion of free will.
Your notion of free will results in the God of the Bible being wrathful for what he directly caused to happen, people sinning, by creating people determined to sin.
It's not about logic. It's about NT revelation, of which your grasp has a limp.
Logic plays an indispensable role to properly read and interpret Scripture and drawing deductions and inferences from the Scriptures. If my argument has a limp, you have not demonstrated the limp. Neither do the verses you cite to establish any limp in my argument.
John 8:34” So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”
Context is important to properly interpreting a text. The Greek meaning of the words of the NT, the NT was composed in Greek, Koine Greek to be exact, is important to understanding what the NT text says. The Greek meaning in conjunction with the context does not support your POV.
Jesus is not asserting people MUST choose sin and have no choice in the matter. Rather, the meaning and context is contrasting two groups of people and in such a manner that is consistent with the notion of free will I have presented.
First the Greek for “commit” means to “practice.” The Greek meaning for the verb form of the word “practice” is “repetition…regular practice…routine or habit…done habitually…”
So, Jesus’ literal comments in Greek mean, pas ho poiōn ho hamartia doulos ho hamartia, and that literally means "everyone who routinely does sin is a slave to sin” or “habitually does sin” or “regularly does sin.”
Now, the word “slave” in Greek has a meaning of describing a relationship between people. The Greek word for slave and its meaning isn’t and does not speak to whether people have free will to make their choices or whether their choices are determined for them, forced upon them, as it relates to their metaphysical relationship to God, sin, punishment, etcetera.
And the argument you’ve made before of slaves not being “free” is nothing but a referral to the legal recognition they are owned by another person. The legality doesn’t indicate, as it relates to God, that people must or are forced to choose sin.
The context in which Jesus is speaking supports the notion Jesus isn’t using the word “slave” to mean people must or are forced to choose sin.
Jesus spoke in the conditional of if X, then Y. “If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”33
The Greek word for “continue” is “to stay…remain…to not depart.” This is a Greek word John used over 17 times between the Gospel of John, John 1 and 2, and did so to say “do not depart” which is to “remain in…stay in” Jesus’ Word. Jesus is saying 1.) IF they do not depart from His word, 2.) Then they will know the Truth and be free from habitually sinning. The point here is the disciples are to “not depart” or “continue in…remain in.”
The admonishment by Jesus to the disciples to not depart from, remain in, is consistent with freely choosing to do so. They freely choose to remain, they feeely choose to not depart, and in doing so, they are not habitually sinning. This group of people freely choosing to remain in Jesus, of course, comes with a decision to believe in Jesus. Logically, one cannot depart from or remain without first coming to Jesus, a free choice.
Indeed, we see in verse 30 others came to believe. “As He said these things, many came to believe in Him.” The literal Greek is, “These things of His speaking, many believed in Him.” Believed in Greek means, as used in the verse, “to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in, of the thing believed.” This necessarily means before hearing Jesus “many” did not believe but upon hearing him “many” did believe. The notion they freely chose to believe is consistent with the text, which is to say nothing contradicts freely choosing.
The disciples and “many” are contrasted with those who habitually sin. Logically, to contrast the two groups, the latter group of people habitually sinning are choosing to do so as their free choice, is the opposite of remaining in Jesus’ Word and the results are derivatives of the two groups free choices.
So, the context is contrasting those habitually sinning, et. all, with those who are “set free” from sinning habitually by follwoing Jesus’ “Word,” which results in knowing the “truth” and the “truth” results in freedom from habitually sinning. They are slaves, slaves is a relationship to someone, for Christ, their relationship is to Jesus, adherence to him, which frees them from a relationship of habitually sinning. The freedom is from the relation of habitually sinning, and that freedom is attained by “continuing” a relationship in Jesus’ teachings and Scripture, which means the slave aspect is in regards to two kinds of relationships, slave/relationship to Jesus, or slave/relation to ha habitually sinning. And consistent with that relationship is freely choosing the relationship.
Simply, there’s nothing in John 8:31-34 supporting your view.
God is not responsible for your condemnation, Adam is.
God offers the only remedy for Adam's squandering of your inheritance
Not really, as I explain below.
We are born judged, sentenced and condemned by Adam's sin (Romans 5:18, Romans 5:12-14).
Adam’s sin is not imputed onto us or his progeny. Neither is the penalty of physical death imputed onto us on the basis of Adam’s view. You espouse a view parallel if not identical to Original Sin. Your view and that of Original sin, as you expressed it above, finds no basis in the plain text or the Greek.
Theologically, your statement we are judged and condemned as a result of Adam’s sin is very contentious. A basis of the disagreement is “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned,” Romans 5:12
Your approach is ostensibly to assume whatever version of the Bible/NT you’ve quoted from that the translation of the Greek is correct. This is a dubious assumption since the Koine Greek is the NT was written in is ancient and composed over nearly 2,000 years ago, Paul’s letters included.
The human language is complex, with idioms, metaphors, allegories, synonyms, multiple meanings for words, context and word usage.
The fact is the verses you cite, and the meaning you attribute to them, is not unambiguously inferred from the text and neither is your meaning a must based on the plain text.
A reasonable reading of the plain text passage of 5:12 is death spread to all but not because of Adam, but because all humans have sinned and as a result of their sin, death. Indeed, that meaning is how “so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned,” reasonably reads. Death comes to all mankind because they all sinned.
Now, what is the original Greek meaning?
The Koine Greek “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον, eph’ ho pantes hemarton,” “death spread to all” is ambiguous and the subject of scholarly debate. The debate as to the proper interpretation is not contemporary and dates as far back to Irenaeus and Augustine.
The Greek “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ” was interpreted by Augustine to say, “spread to all people who sinned in Adam.” This interpretation supports Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin and is a view consistent with what you’ve said so far.
But the scholarly work and opinion of Schreiner in is book, “Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament,” identifies two flaws with Augustine’s less than accurate reading of the Greek. “First, the antecedent ἀνθρώπου is so far away that it is dubious to identify it as the antecedent to ᾧ. Second, the word ἐν rather than ἐϕʼ would have been used if Paul had intended to say that “in” Adam all sinned.”
As Schreiner states, “
But the verb ἁμαρτάνειν with the subject πάντες also tells against the view that the reference is to the sin people committed corporately in Adam as well.
The verb refers regularly to voluntary sin that people commit in their own persons (cf. 2: 12; 3: 23; see Wilckens 1978: 316–17; Käsemann 1980: 148–49; Jüngel 1963: 51–52; Fitzmyer 1993c: 417).
It is quite improbable on linguistic grounds that “all sinned” means “all sinned in Adam.” Wedderburn (1972–73: 351) argues that the connection between the sin of Adam and the rest of humanity is conveyed by the first part of verse 12 and not the latter part of the verse. The most natural way to construe πάντες ἥμαρτον is to see a reference to the personal and individual sin of all people.[ 7] According to Wedderburn, the last part of verse 12 is concerned first of all to
show that death spread to all people because they all sinned voluntarily in their own persons.“
And Schreiner shares in the
voluntary sinful conduct by all humanity as the correct interpretation based on usage, meaning, sentence structure, and Paul’s writings habits.
Schreiner also finds, in the Greek, word usage, writing habits, sentence structure, Paul’s explanation of why all people have voluntarily sinned and hence, subject to physical death. “
When Paul says “all sinned,” he indeed means that every human being has personally sinned…As a result of Adam’s sin death entered the world and engulfed all people; all people enter the world alienated from God and spiritually dead by virtue of Adam’s sin. By virtue of entering the world in the state of death (i.e., separated from God), all human beings sin. This understanding of the text confirms the view of scholars who insist that original death is more prominent than “original sin” in this text.[ 8] The personal sin of human beings is explained by the sway death holds over us. Such an interpretation is also supported by the notion that death is a power that reigns and rules over us now (Rom. 5: 14, 17) and that culminates in physical death. Moreover, Paul says specifically in 5: 15 that human beings “died” because of the trespass of Adam.
Our alienation and separation from God are due to Adam’s sin, and thus we sin as a result of being born into the world separated from God’s life.”
In other words, we will inevitably choose sin by our own volition because A) we are born in a world of sin B) alienated from God and as a result C) we will voluntarily choose sin.
So, my view is free will isn’t toothless but rather has support in Scripture, including but not limited to those specific Romans verses.
Your idea, and that of Augustine, of original sin and we must sin is “toothless” as it has no basis in the Greek scriptures, no basis in Judaism, and was never on the chess board as a viable theological doctrine rooted in Scripture.
My view of free will and sin find support in the Greek NT and Judaism’s concepts of sin, death, and punishment.