Msortwell,
The ability to sin, and the inclination to sin, are the same thing. Your dichotomy is false.
Similarly, God's "will" equals God's "can". It is no different with man.
Funny how you depart from the generic principles of Calvinism when it comes to Eden.
A primary tenet of Calvinism is that doctrine is constructed from truths logically deduced from the inspired text. You build your doctrine within the silent margins of Scripture and when asked to provide the basis for your understanding you generally dodge the question.
The basis, as I implied, is the foundation of Calvinism: God’s “will” = God’s “can”, as seen in “Jesus Christ the wisdom and the power of God”, and on the man side of things: man’s inability to be righteous is inextricably tied to his will: (‘Total Depravity’ ) .
You cannot have it both ways. If you declare that man cannot desire righteousness because he is not capable of it, then you must agree that capability and volition are inextricably tied together when it comes to spiritual state.
We thus conclude that man’s spiritual ability is inextricably tied to his will, and that Adam’s will manifesting itself as it did, his spiritual ability was pointed in the same sinful ‘direction’: self before God: ‘Me first’.
Your methodology requires explicit reference. But explicit reference is not the stuff of deeper doctrine. Deeper doctrine is derived, not stated. That is why it is not as readily known. And that is why it is enjoyable discovering it.
You have made the unfounded leap that whatsoever the Bible describes regarding the present condition of man, relative to depravity, applies to Adam.
It is quiet well founded: “ a tree is known by its fruit”… “ a good tree bringeth forth not corrupt fruit”.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this principle of statal constancy holds by default. It is your preconception which prohibits the proper uninhibited application of this verse to the beginning of creation: redundantly framing your premise as argument.
Jesus in these verses enunciates a philosophical principle: you cannot pull yourself off the ground by your own bootstraps. Such principle is the very foundation of Calvinism: God must save, for man is not capable of it.
The onus is on you to show that there was an interruption to this principle of states, that at some earlier point in time, that which emanated could do so from a state contrary to itself.
I see no evidence in Scripture that even hints that Adam was created predisposed/inclined to sin.
You haven't thought through just what sort of evidence would suffice. Let us know.
I readily admit that I see no evidence for the doctrine that you hold. You are the one that holds this doctrine, why will you not offer the basis for this belief.
You ask for evidence, yet you:
1. Do not stipulate what sort of evidence you require.
2. Render as inadmissible the evidence of what occurred: Adam’s having sinned, thus robbing us of our prime evidence, and attempting to force us to find less convincing evidence.
Presumably you feel that there should be evidence of his propensity to sin, before his having sinned. This is to request the chicken before the egg. And it is to invent some virtual hypothetical entity which leans toward a negative while at the same time being completely unattached to it. Such creature cannot exist in our time-space continuum.
We show you the chicken and thus declare there must have been an egg, and you tell us that you want proof of the egg apart from the chicken. If our legal system ever adopts these principles, the streets will be full of criminals.
The overall principle remains: Adam was not God, and therefore being not God, was a sinner. There is only one non-sinner in the universe: God.
and all that is not God is a sinner? Is the angel Gabriel a sinner? Is my dog a sinner? Is a stone a sinner?
You should assume at this level of theology that such trivial counterexamples are already taken into account in our assertion:
Dogs are not spiritual beings.
Angels that are God’s, are so because just as with human beings, they are elect (1 Ti 5:21). Their substance is a mystery, but they appear to have some internal tie to the person of God, hence “the angel of the Lord” can refer to God Himself.
Angels that are not elect simply prove our assertion: they are now demons.
You will agree with the often touted “sin is separation from God” . But you need to go further here:
That which is not God, is by definition, infinitely separated from God. Man is not God, and therefore constitutes sin. Hence Rom 8:20's "..the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly.., meaning, "the non-creator spirits were put into the uselessness of a physical domain, that which is ineffective toward the kingdom of God and which self-expires accordingly".
This is why He did not do what God wanted, for only God can do what God wants. This is the principle of Total Depravity.
The problem is that you think of ‘separation’ from God merely in terms of relationship, but it is more than this in the spiritual realm: it is state of being. Thus “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” .
It follows then that one’s experiencing a relational separation from God is simply a manifestation of one’s statal separation from God, viz. no-one who is not God is joined to God.
This ‘state causes effect’ principle was typed in Adam’s first of all being naked, before he knew he was naked.
Consider the parallel in the human body: a donated organ will be rejected unless powerful anti-rejection drugs are used. Because the organ is not of the same stock (‘being’ ) as that in which it is implanted, it experiences a ‘relational separation’. This shadow realm example speaks to the state of things in the heavenlies/spiritual realm.
Sin cannot proceed from one who is not a sinner. A tree is known by its fruit.
You cannot say that someone was once not a sinner, but now is: this is philosophically erroneous: something cannot transform itself into that which has no part in it.
You consistently confuse man’s current condition with Adam's created condition.
Again, your domain restriction here is artificial. And it is to redundantly frame your premise as an argument.
A tree is known by its fruit. The onus is on you to show some interruption to this universal principle, not on us to doubly prove it is true.
Consider also the scripture: “Man is tempted, when he is drawn aside by his own lust”. Thus Adam had lust. Lust cannot come from non-lust anymore than life can come from non-life.
Adam was under no federal head.
Which is why he could not and would not submit to God. This is a foundation of Calvinism.
Only that which is under the Headship of God, will and can please God. That which cannot and will not please God, is sin.
Thus there is no record in the bible of Adam’s pleasing of God in Eden. And this stands to reason, for “without faith it is impossible to please Him”, and we know that faith’s necessary companion is absence of sight of the object of faith.
Adam could see God in Eden.
No man had ever sinned before.
There is a first time for everything. But it is more than that: Adam was in sin as soon as he opened his eyes. He just didn’t know it. A little while later his wife helped him find out about it.
Praise God for our wives: without them, we wouldn’t know why we needed help! (Haha!)
“Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her”
He was created with the ability to sin.
This is erroneous, and unscriptural.
And it is easy to show the errancy thereof:
Describe what this ‘ability’ comprises without referring to the will (define it without reference to the will).
You continue to refer to Jesus proclamation in Matthew 7 regarding trees and fruit. It is a metaphor! Let’s try pressing that metaphor a bit further. Is a bad tree surely to have always been a bad tree? That is, is it necessary that it never bore good fruit? No. A tree can bear good fruit for a season and then bear bad fruit at a later time.
You illegally modify/extend the analogy. Inherent in Jesus’ reference to the tree analogy, is the premise that the tree stays the same. Otherwise there is no application in it.
You contradict the basic tenets of Total Depravity, and eternal righteousness.
But, before it bears bad fruit something changes within the tree itself.
A born again believer is not merely revamped, he is regenerated. The literal Greek of 2 Cor 5:17’s “new creature” means “a creature that has never existed before”. Thus ”it is no longer I that liveth, but Christ”.
The point of Jesus’ tree analogy is that state cannot transform itself either positively of negatively.
You seem to miss this philosophical principle time and again. Your assertion that a tree might not remain as is, is simply another instance of framing your premise as an argument. Redundant.
When Adam was offered the fruit, he most certainly did lust after it. He desired it. But it was not a desire placed within him by his Creator.
All things were created by the creator. That is why we call Him the Creator.
That is why He tells us that He creates evil; that is why He commisioned a demon to bring down Ahab; that is why He tells us He hardened Pharoah’s heart; that is why He tells us He makes the deaf and blind as they are from birth.
But such is to go beyond minimum required proof. Man was not God, and therefore had no reason to put God before himself.
You see, the gospel, and all of reality, is framed within the absolute of ‘person’.
Namely, that each person is unique and a closed entity: no person contains another person. The implication is therefore that no person will desire the absolute good of another person, unless he is that other person.
God is not a non-sinner because of what he does not do: He is a non-sinner because He is not [not God]. That is, God is a unique individual who is the substantive of existence: the “I am” . It is not whether one has the status (rank) of God that defines whether one is in sin or not, it is whether one is the unique individual person who is God, that defines whether one is in sin or not.
To give you an example, suppose you were God as you are. I am of the same rank as you (we are both humans) yet you are God and I am not. Now, even though we are of the same rank, I am in sin, because I am not you. My state of sin will then ratify itself: I will do what is best for me, and not for you. On the other hand, you can do what you want, and it will never be sin, because it is done by you.
There is a great gospel song of the 1980s in which is the line: "Lord I worship You because of who You are, not for all the mighty deeds that You have done".
It is the Holy Spirit who relates to us the unique personality, the unique ‘personness’, the unique identity, of God.
And it would seem to me that James 1:13-17 is trying very hard to make sure that we understand that God did not place the desire to sin within man. He is not responsible for placing the desire to sin in man today, there is no reason to presume that he placed it within Adam.
On the contrary, James is laying down the line of demarcation between God’s sovereign activity (which includes our actions) and our right to blame Him in an attempt to exhonerate ourselves. Such verse is parallel to Rom 9:19-21.
This verse of James is nearly always erroneously extended to the full scope of sovereignty. Instead, it deals with the attitude of the believer, rendering hyper-Calvinistic attitudes (“I sinned because I was predestined to do it and therefore it is not my fault” ) as disobedience to the gospel.
Similarly, John tells us that one born of God cannot sin, after just having told us that if we say we have no sin, we lie.
The ‘we cannot sin’ concept relates our state of being in Christ; the earlier warning about boasting has a different apobetic and pragmatic focus: it is to ensure those in Christ understand they are there by grace and grace alone.
Worship Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.