Importance of Original Sin

The Mosaic law and its very specific dictates were added hundreds of years after Gods people were a people. Was thier value any less real, before that time?Cannot this limited God of yours develope things as he sees fitEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Haha. You actually seem to have evaded my argument completely. This isn't about whether or not God feels "guilty" about anything, this is about something much bigger. What is your standard by which you measure what you describe as Gods "guilt?" Does he feel guilt because the text says "God felt guilt," or did you read that into the text?
Sure, we can use reason, make speculations and assumptions, and conclude that God felt guilt here, but what is guilt? By what standard do you measure guilt?That's called begging the question: assuming something to be true before you have proven it is, a logical fallacy. Let's not make any assumptions here Is that what I'm doing? Sure, perhaps that has been your personal experience with christians, but it is personal experience. We all exerience things differently, dont we? However I do agree with you haha, we all too often tend to throw out blanket statements and assume things to be true and obvious before showing adequate reason/proof. So let's do that here. I said "He is not willing that any should die, but he is, by nature, the antithesis of darkness." Is that an incredibly simplistic, black box idea of God? What does the text say? Here's what I read:"He is not willing that any should die:" "...but he is, by nature, the antithesis of darkness." And there are others. What does the text say? I seriously appreciate that arach, no patronization intended. I love it. I would say I have the same goal. If that is indeed your intention here, then let's be fair. I'll drop my presuppositions if you will do the same. If your intention is to disprove dogmatic misreadings of scripture, shall we not first begin with asking the Holy Spirit for the wisdom necessary in order to do so? After all: I mean, if you are a student of the scriptures, which i am assuming you are based on your obvious knowledge, competence, and passion, you therefore acknowledge the fact that our own human wisdom is not sufficient enough to do this on our own. Again, here you have totally evaded my argument and assumed something to be true without proving that it is. Let's look at what you are talking about:"blasphemy! for you to do such a thing! to kill the innocent with the wicked, so that the innocent are like the wicked. blasphemy! will the judge of all the earth not do justice?"
-- abraham, genesis 18:25.Here we see Abraham "judging" God in a way, being confused at God's actions, much in the same way you are. Abraham is running into the exact same problem. A better question would be: Where did Abraham get the idea that God is being immoral? or even: is morality a transcendent concept, or merely a subjective tool? Not even getting into the fact that since God created Abraham, he created him with a notion that certain things are innately right and wrong, I would say that having had an encounter with something that transcends himself and humanity (God), Abraham now has a concept of morality outside of subjectivism.I love it, and it brings us back to the question you have not addressed: What standard do you use to judge God as immoral? Yes, in essence. What do you use? Where did you get the idea of a "right" and a "wrong?" If biology, evolution, and neurology are where we derive morality from, how could there be any consistency within morality when there is such variance in at least the evolution, and neurology of people (All of which I know very little about so I will now slowly...back...away... haha)All I'm trying to say is this: If you cannot show there is a standard outside of God to account for morality, we cannot dive into the little "Abraham said this, God seems to feel like this way" details, because God is the standard. No matter what we feel, or how it appears, it really doesn't matter,because God is the standard. After all: That almost hurts to say right? Haha like it kind of rubs us the wrong way. It calls forth sentiments like: How could there possibly be a transcendent morality outside our subjective experience? "It seems so obvious that God is being "immoral" or "unjst" here, I just don't understand." But that's the hard pill for us all to swallow: Even when it seems unjust or immoral or even weird to us, it actually...doesn't matter...since God, and therefore, morality, transcends our reason and emotions. Blah that's hard right?How's that for OT theology? Haha.Hope that makes sense!- RaphEdited by Raphael, : No reason given.Edited by Raphael, : No reason given.Edited by Raphael, : No reason given.

It is ok that over the 66 books of the divine revelation God gradually and progressively unveils more and more of His salvation.Even in the Tanach the implication of man needing spiritual enlivening from a spiritual death is strongly indicated in Ezekiel 36.

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"I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

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And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and My ordinances you shall keep and do." (Ezek. 36:26,27)

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People of flesh with hearts of stone surely suggests a spiritually unresponsive and dead spiritual inner being. God needs to replace the stone heart with a living flesh heart and the old spirit with a new spirit.People with the heart of stone taken away and given a heart of flesh surely suggests an enlivening to spiritual life. And this making alive causes responsiveness to God's will. Being given a new and living heart they will walk in the Divine statutes and ordinances.So spiritual death is not totally a New Testament concept.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You said that jaywill is, "giving you the answer its right in front of you." I'm saying that the "answer" has no clothes - i.e. no substance. It's unscriptural. It has no purpose other than to shirk responsibility.

Simpler than that. God wanted Abraham to understand the moral complexities for himself, not just have them handed to him.

in fact, the word means "wind". most modern translations translate it as such:

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...and a wind from God sweeping over the water...

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the concepts are similar because it is the act of breathing that makes something alive. the two (though not in this verse) are linguistically tied. and yet, you offer not counter argument or evidence. where in the old testament does yahweh appear in a fluffy spiritual sense? every where i've read has him show up viscerally and powerfully: voices booming from the heavens or the mountains, or sometimes bodily, in front of moses and aaron, or at mamre to abraham, etc. the spiritual concept is newer, and old testament authors were trying to convince their readers that yahweh -- who lived in the temple -- was real. you couldn't see him because he was in the temple, not because he like, lived in our hearts or some other silly nonsense. so, god is not a jealous god? or he is? and has human qualities, like a physical body, too? are these aspects of his character, or not? abraham does not benefit, and neither did yahweh. abraham was supposed to intercede on behalf of his son, just as he did on behalf of his nephew. he was supposed to stand up to yahweh, and tell yahweh that he was wrong to ask this because his son was innocent. abraham failed, and yahweh lost a valued resource in the process. it's about more than god, it's about how god and israel are to relate, or how they will relate. israel, whose name literally means "fights with gods". do you suppose this is also an accident? yahweh chose israel, a "stiff-necked" people because they were stiff-necked and stubborn, and would fight for what was right even if yahweh himself was the opponent. it's a quality he seems to both lament and praise in his chosen people.

i only regret that you will not be able to come back and say so yourself.

yes, you can't be held to an agreement made long after you're dead. if yahweh does so, he is unreasonable, and unjust. the law is predicated on rescuing israel from egypt. but joseph was doing just fine there. sure he can, but you can't pretend that each new development was there all along. either he develops as he sees fit, or he is unchanging. choose one.in this case, adam couldn't have spiritually died because, to the old testament authors, the spirit was made him physically alive. spiritually dead is physically dead. spiritual death is a nonsense concept within the confines of genesis 2 and 3.did god retroactively change that?

inference. in this case, anyways. if the question is "does the text say that yahweh feels guilt?" within the context of the J source, the answer is a resounding yes. it does, in fact, say that in genesis 6. is it measurable? in this case, yahweh seem to be trying to find the best, most moral path. and this is a complicated thing, quite far from the simplistic notions of "whatever god says is just." instead, yahweh's inner dialog is externalized in a debate with abraham. is killing the wicked moral? and at what price? these are complicated moral issues, and i'm trying to use this text to demonstrate that at least one author of the bible actually treated this as a complex moral issue, far from the simplistic notions of "god said it, so it's right." kind of, yeah. i mean, it's better than some. he clearly is willing that some should die. in fact, he commands as such multiple times. and there is clearly darkness in him, too. i'll come back to that. perhaps your argument is less simplistic than others -- it does represent that yahweh is being pulled in two different directions here. so i will give you that. i'm just not sure it represents the nuance and complexity of the inner turmoil he must be going through in this chapter. rather, it's just culled from two different, simplistic theologies. it says,

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יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חֹשֶׁךְ
עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא רָע
אֲנִי יְהוָה, עֹשֶׂה כָל-אֵלֶּה

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i shape light and i create darkness
i make peace and i create evil
i am yahweh, and i do all these things

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and

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וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים, הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ, לָדַעַת, טוֹב וָרָע

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behold, the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil!

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and things like that. genesis 18 comes from a literary tradition that regards yahweh as dualistic, having both qualities contained within him. the quotes above come from a more recent monastic/wisdom tradition that regards god as wholly good -- even those apparently evil bits. they're not quite the same thing. i do not happen to subscribe to the idea that the bible -- a text written by and for humans -- is incomprehensible without some kind of magical, authoritative, spiritual aid. i see plenty of meaning, power, and beauty in the text without appeals to spirituality, and in fact vastly moreso since i have left the christian churches. that authority is generally used to enforce a pseudo-orthodox reading of the text that frequently denies or glosses over the important nuance, individuality, details, or real meaning of source texts. it does so because those meanings, particularly in the case of J here, are heterodox or even heresy to christian or even jewish churches. the idea that god should feel guilt is among them.indeed, this is part of the dogma we should do away with. we should come at the text with clear eyes and open minds, and fresh attention to the details therein whatever they may actually say, and not try to jam the text into what we think the holy spirit would appreciate. in fact, it precisely appeals such as these that have kept people in the dark for so long, regarding the contents of the bible. to tell us that our human brains are incapable of understanding words on a page is to allow another to stand in for those words, and tell you what they mean. whether that's "the holy spirit" or your local pastor, of what use is the bible? why not simply have that entity tell you the will of god, and cut out the middleman. this idea, that the common man was incapable of understanding the bible, is very literally what caused the dark ages. and printing copies of the bible in vulgar translations is what brought us out of it. i believe we are talking past each other here, as this is precisely the question that i am not begging, but asking outright: what standard is abraham using? because it's not god. how can yahweh be judged according to himself? remember that yahweh agrees with abraham on this matter. bingo. morality is biological, a very fiber of our being. one might argue that this is the tree of knowledge, but i don't especially want to get into that one. either way, abraham is born with it, and it's not handed down to him in a book by yahweh. it is, even if you think it originally came from yahweh, it is external to yahweh such that he can later be judged by it. the same standard anyone uses to judge anything as moral or immoral. at least, i would hope. i truly fear that there are people out there who actually think that morality and god are indistinguishable, such that you cannot question anything god commands, including some of the very worst things in the law. but i suspect that it is our external morality that keeps us from, say, stoning our neighbors for working on saturday, or for being hindu. most of read the text and don't really think "god said it, so it must be right, let's go kill some sabbath violators!" we think that killing our neighbors would be morally wrong and so we don't. i don't think you do. i hope you don't. because, as this text points out, god is not always just. and there is. which is why we have sociopaths. but there is evolutionary pressure to keep those folks to a minimum: they're bad for our in-group. the in-group/out-group model actually goes a fair towards explaining some of the contradictory morals of the old testament, in that it's a nearly universal trait among humans and in fact most other animals as well that killing our social or familial groups is a bad thing (they help you survive), but killing people outside of that group eliminates competition for food and resources. thus, "thou shalt not kill" and "except for the canaanites, kill as many of them as possible." it's why we care more about our friends and family than starving children in africa, or even genocide half way around the world. we get this kind of commonality because it is strongly selected for in the evolution of social animals. well, no. the general picture has be the sum of the details, not arrived at beforehand in spite of the details. now who's question begging? the details matter, and in this case, abraham has an external standard for morality that applies even to god, and god agrees with it.

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30 This Godhis way is perfect;
the word of the Lord proves true;

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i think that, rather than looking at a song of praise and submission and trying to view the entire bible through that lens, you should view these songs or praise through the lens of the entire bible. in this case, the way of god is perfect because of instances like these. because he expects his patriarchs, kings, and prophets to question him, and because he used these ethical quandaries to establish an impartial law.you have to remember to set aside the christian readings of the law, here. to a jewish person, the law is the ultimate gift, and an authority that supersedes god himself. it is a contract between yahweh and israel that binds both sides. not even god himself can break it, and if he does -- as he arguably did sending judah into exile -- you get texts like job questioning whether god is just. not too great. sorry, just calling it like i see it. as lewis black said, if you want to know what the old testament means, there are jews around you.though i'm not jewish myself, much of my above argument is strongly influenced by contemporary, secular jewish commentaries, notably dershowitz and bloom.

i think you are reading what you want to see into this particular metaphor.hearts of stone suggests people that are not empathetic. see, for instance, yahweh hardening the heart of pharaoh in exodus; he does not take pity on the israelites and let them go.a new spirit suggests that they have one already, not that they were born "spiritually dead". yahweh is saying that he will be there very lifeforce, their reason for existing. yes, it is. you are reading a very anachronistic meaning for "spirit" into the text. it simply does not treat the concept metaphysically. metaphorically, sure. metaphysically, no.

or rather, the author of J wants us, the readers, to understand the moral complexities for ourselves, and not just have them handed to us.as i think i wrote above, this process of laboriously establishing ethics (generally through ethical failures) is J's argument for the law of moses and why it is the ultimate blessing that yahweh gave his chosen people.

Showing up in a certain way is no indication that he is actually physical. In fact sense God is desribed as Spirit by the NT writers, it would be more reasonable to assume the non-physical. sense that would be simplier to describeConsider the following passage from Duet"Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure: the likeness of male or female." Not in the same exact way. "My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways" While Abraham did grow in his faith of Gods infinite wisdom, again Sodom and Abrahams request to sacrifce Isaac, again were not about AbrahamGod showed up to Abraham in both instances knowing what the outcome would be. His purposes would have been accomplished in the same way, had Rahab not decided to lie to her people.His purposes were the point, not AbrahamGod chose Abraham, not Israel. it was due to Abrahams faithfulness that they benifited. If there was ever a stretch, you made it in your above comment

xEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

But Your missing the big picture Arac. Yes the Spirit breathed into him the breath of life, true. But you exclude the point that we are created in Gods IMAGE, another area of responsibility, not shared by the animal worldHence it requires a different response a different type of punishment. Spiritual death is a response to Spiritual (non-physical) responsibilitesHow could you ever get around or avoid that obvious pointDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Who is shirking responsibility?Dawn Bertot