Question for TE's that believe in a literal Adam/Garden

[ShallCarry]

Can a dog sin against God? No... he doesn't understand the difference between good and evil.

Until Adam understood the concept of evil, he was not accountable. Therefore he was unabe to sin until he ate of the fruit.

This argument carries over to children now. If a child is incapable of understanding sin, he is not accountable for his actions.

Comments?

--Rich

 

[shernren]

If a child is incapable of understanding sin, he is not accountable for his actions.

Even if the Bible says "I was sinful since birth"?

I'm curious where the teaching of "age of accountability" comes from. I'm probably an inferior Christian for not knowing (heh) but it seems to me that believing this requires another suspension of the "plain and simple" / "straightforward" hermeneutic.

 

[stumpjumper]

Can a dog sin against God? No... he doesn't understand the difference between good and evil.

Until Adam understood the concept of evil, he was not accountable. Therefore he was unabe to sin until he ate of the fruit.

This argument carries over to children now. If a child is incapable of understanding sin, he is not accountable for his actions.

Comments?

--Rich

Read Romans 5 again and you will see that Paul says that man sinned before the law but was not accountable for his sins because there was no law.

Original sin comes from freedom: freedom for our moral actions and the natural freedom that was responsible for bringing life about on earth.

Orginal sin is our estrangement from God.

 

[mark kennedy]

I have a few ideas of what the answer to this question might be, but I’m interested in hearing other opinions about it.

Did Adam sin prior to eating of the tree of knowledge or whatever event you believe is symbolized by this?

That begs the question of what is sin does it not? Sin is anything unlike God's righteousness so to say that Adam was sinless is a little misleading. Was Adam the righteousnes of God in every thought, word and deed? No, of course not or he would not have broken the only law he could break. Adam and Eve were innocent since the never directly disobeyed God by transgressing the law but that is not the same thing as being sinless. The law just brings out the sin and exposes it, its not the cure.

Your thinking of sin as being some transgression of the law but that is not how it works. The standard is the righteousness of God and there is no such thing as 99% or 101%. Sin in the New Testament is Hamartia which means to miss the mark. It's the idea of an archer who misses the bullseye. Had Adam been sinless the transgression of the law that resulted in death would have been impossible.

In answer to your question I would like to pose this question:

Was Adam righteous by the standard of the righteousness of God?

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[random_guy]

Genetic evidence indicates that the entire human race came from one man and woman. If there was a Garden, Adam probably sinned in order to break out of it. Eden sounds like Hell to me. Eternity pruning fruit trees.

There is no genetic evidence that we all came from a single pair of humans. If it was so, there would be genetic bottleneck that would be easy to trace (see cheetah). Perhaps you've been confused by the scientific terms Mitochrondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam.

Mitochrondrial Eve is an unnamed female that has an unbroken line of female daughters. There were lots of other people around the time of Mitochrondrial Eve, however, they couldn't keep passing on they mitochrondria DNA (either died before chance to give birth, or only gave birth to sons).

Y-Chromosome Adam, is a completely unrelated person to Mitochrondrial Eve. He is more recent. He represents a similar thing as ME, an unbroken line of sons.