Question regarding TE theological implications

[Michael Parent]

All,

My question is about a a theological implication of TE.
Given TE (and finite universe of the universe), Mankind was created mortal (physical death, not spiritual).
This means that God created physical death, and therefore physical death is not "bad."

My trouble is how do i harmonize this belief with the atonement of Jesus who came to (and did) conquer sin and death (death here is explicitly physical).
If physical death was created from God, why must it be conquered?

My only thought on the issue is that it didn't need to be conquered, but rather God wanted to proclaim that it was conquered. This might mean that:
We have an unnatural fear of death from out sin and separation from God.
God sees this unnatural fear and wants to proclaim victory over it.
He sends Jesus to conquer sin and proclaim victory over death (though didn't actually defeat death, as, in this sense, it would not need defeating).

These are my thoughts, I would love to hear other ideas about this, or fallacies in my thinking.

Thank you,
M

 

[alexandriaisburning]

If physical death was created from God, why must it be conquered?

My only thought on the issue is that it didn't need to be conquered, but rather God wanted to proclaim that it was conquered. This might mean that:
We have an unnatural fear of death from out sin and separation from God.
God sees this unnatural fear and wants to proclaim victory over it.
He sends Jesus to conquer sin and proclaim victory over death (though didn't actually defeat death, as, in this sense, it would not need defeating).

This is more or less how I think about it as well.

If we step back from thinking about "death" in terms of our personal experience (e.g., the concept of "final cessation of conscious thought"), we see that death is intrinsic to the universe, and is in fact the basis upon which life is built. As we live and grow, death is an operative principle in our existence that allows us to change from a few cells, to more cells, to more complicated structures, to fully-formed conscious beings. But along the way, at each step of change, death is at work as old cells die and new ones merge; without this cycle of death and rebirth, we are not "living", we do not grow, and we cannot know what it is to be alive within this universe.

So far from a "evil", biological death is intrinsic to how the universe works. If we presume that this operation of the universe is truly the "good" work of our Creator, then we must conclude that our dispersions of death are primarily (if not exclusively) a result of something that has gone wrong in our thinking...and I agree with you that this corruption in thought is a direct consequence of being alienated from life and communion with God.

But even beyond the physical evidence for the "goodness" of death, we find the ultimate validation of it in the Incarnation of Christ. By assuming our humanity and clothing divinity in creatureliness, God has forever proclaimed the goodness of creation by taking unto Godself that which God has created. If we assume that the Incarnation is not just a last-ditch rescue mission in response to human sin, but is more fundamentally something which was always included in God's plan for creation, then our eyes can be opened to see a very different creation.

So then, when the apostle speaks of Christ defeating death, he is (IMO) speaking of Christ overcoming our alienation from God. In reconciling us to God, Christ recapitulates creation, restoring to us a proper understanding of the "goodness" of the cosmos and our place within it. And in his resurrection, Christ embodies the hope of that creation that is to come.

 

[Willtor]

All,

My question is about a a theological implication of TE.
Given TE (and finite universe of the universe), Mankind was created mortal (physical death, not spiritual).
This means that God created physical death, and therefore physical death is not "bad."

My trouble is how do i harmonize this belief with the atonement of Jesus who came to (and did) conquer sin and death (death here is explicitly physical).
If physical death was created from God, why must it be conquered?

My only thought on the issue is that it didn't need to be conquered, but rather God wanted to proclaim that it was conquered. This might mean that:
We have an unnatural fear of death from out sin and separation from God.
God sees this unnatural fear and wants to proclaim victory over it.
He sends Jesus to conquer sin and proclaim victory over death (though didn't actually defeat death, as, in this sense, it would not need defeating).

These are my thoughts, I would love to hear other ideas about this, or fallacies in my thinking.

Thank you,
M

I'd echo what both you and alexandriaisburning have to say. I also have a couple of observations about biblical talk about death:

As you say, Jesus was physically dead... and then he was physically alive again! But that raises more questions than it answers. After all, the ancient hymn goes, "Sleeper awake! Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you!" (Eph. 5:14, NRSV) in the context of people who are already physically alive.

The idea that I get from this is that one can "see" physical death and recognize the loss of connection with others. When I die, you and I can no longer have a relationship with each other. In some sense, I "live on" in the memories of the people my life impacted, but I no longer grow and develop. My relationship with you doesn't deepen and become more significant. The connection that sustained the relationship is broken.

But maybe it isn't, really. Maybe it's put on hold. Really, there's no empirical way to test that. But it's strange to worship the God who is Love, and who eternally exists in relationship, and then to say that we have our time and then it's all over. Thus, the notion of a spiritual death is useful, inasmuch as the physical death that apparently separates us from one another _might be_ similar to a "death" that truly separates us from one another and from God.

If we had perfect faith, what is physical death but a transition to the next thing? Adam and Eve could have died in their own times and gone onto the next thing, meeting God and one another, eventually, on the other side. But when one is separated from God -- when one is dead, spiritually -- then physical death has a bite.

The various authors of the Bible were not especially clear on what happened to people after death -- a lot less certain than modern Christians or atheists. The language is vague and full of symbolism. In fact, in the Old Testament, this shadowy idea of Sheol is, to my mind, a bit more frightening than annihilation. But the sense is pretty universal that the faithful thing is to recognize that physical death is not true separation, and that spiritual death (which _is_ true separation) exists in the presence of physical life.

 

[elopez]

Given TE (and finite universe of the universe), Mankind was created mortal (physical death, not spiritual).

Theistic evolution usually postulates a point at which a population of hominids who had evolved via natural evolution acquired souls and as such had become fully human in spiritual terms.

This means that God created physical death, and therefore physical death is not "bad."

This seems like a non sequitur - the conclusion of God creating death does not seem to follow from the premise that 1) the universe is finite, or 2) that mankind was not created spiritually. We know premise 2 is false as noted above, and "God creating death" has nothing at all to do with the finitude of the universe.

 

[SkyWriting]

My trouble is how do i harmonize this belief with the atonement of Jesus who came to (and did) conquer sin and death (death here is explicitly physical).
If physical death was created from God, why must it be conquered?

God gave us choice/freedom to follow Him voluntarily.

Originally Adam was eternal:
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--