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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Death in Relation to the Creation and Fall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
kbertsche Member (Idle past 2162 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined:
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Faith writes:
If you've studied hermeneutics, you know that one of the most helpful keys to interpretation is context. I would encourage you to look again at the context of Rom 5:12ff.
What I'm doing is standard hermeneutics as I've studied them. Sure I COULD be wrong about this or that but I've spent enough time on these things to be convinced of what I've said here. The rule is to interpret the difficult scriptures by the clear scriptures, there's nothing about percentage. ALL scripture is inspired by God, and it must all be reconciled, you can't make one part contradict another. God said death would be the consequence of disobedience, and "the wages of sin is death" confirms that. Therefore the Tree of LIfe has to conform to that revelation, you can't assume there's a contradiction just because that's the way it first hits you, you can't just make it eliminate the immortality that is obviously implied in the other scriptures. Again, the obscure is to be interpreted by the clear. If you aren't clear about any of it then keep working on it, but I am clear about it. First, Paul is clearly stressing man, not animals as his subject of discussion:
quote:(emphasis mine) Second, what about the word "world" (κόσμος ) in Rom 5:12? This Greek word has a very wide semantic range, so a Greek lexicon doesn't help us much. Again, we need to look at context to decide what it means. And in the context, "world" here is referring to the world of mankind, just as it does in John 3:16 (God loved the world, so that He gave His son, so that whosoever believes in him shall be saved. In Jn 3:16 "world" clearly includes only those who can possibly have faith in Christ, i.e. it is only mankind, not animals.)
Third, we need to note the context of the whole passage. Paul is comparing and contrasting the "First Adam" and the "Second Adam". The first brought sin and death, the second offers righteousness and life. In Paul's argument, if the death of the first included animals, then the eternal life offered by the second must also extend to animals, which is heterodox. Conversely, if in Paul's argument Christ offers eternal life only to mankind, then Paul only has mankind in view when he speaks of Adam bringing death. Stepping back and looking at the context, it should be quite clear that Paul is ONLY talking about mankind in Rom 5:12ff. He doesn't have animals in view at all. Paul's comments in Rom 5:12ff cannot properly be used either to support or to deny animal death before the Fall. Whether or not animals died before the Fall of man must be argued elsewhere."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2162 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Faith writes: As I recall, you too believe in evolution, so that must be why you are making the same argument as all the other "liberal Christians" on this thread. ??? I don't believe I've ever communicated with you before. You don't know me. I am hardly a "liberal Christian". Such ad-hominem attacks don't help your case, and they certainly don't affect the meaning of the biblical text. If you exegete Rom 5:12ff properly, you will see that it speaks only of man. Attempts to shoehorn animals into the passage are simply wrong-headed and violate Paul's argument and context. I would recommend an article on animal death before the Fall by John Munday, originally published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society:Creature Mortality: From Creation Or The Fall? - Reasons to Believe Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2162 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined:
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Faith writes:
My own position doesn't affect the text, which is what we are discussing. I remember you although I don't remember much about you except that you are a scientist, a Christian, and I thought a believer in evolution. Am I wrong about any of that?A "liberal Christian" is a Christian who doesn't regard scripture as inerrant, especially someone who rejects a literal interpretation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Would this be a wrong understanding of your position? ABE: Wrote the above too fast. Liberal Christianity doesn't necessarily reject parts of scripture, they can think they are believers in Bible inerrancy, but they make scripture mean something other than it has been traditionally read to mean by redefining its traditional terms. But I'd still call a Liberal Christian a Christian who rejects the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
But for what it is worth, I am a professional physicist and a committed Christian. I have a theology degree from a conservative Evangelical seminary and I hold to the verbal, plenary inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture. I am a member of the ETS (Evangelical Theological Society), which means that I accept the ICBI's Chicago statements on inerrancy and on hermeneutics. As a physicist, I recognize and accept evidence for an old earth and universe, but I am skeptical of many aspects of macroevolution."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2162 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
DevilsAdvocate writes:
To add to these comments, consider the details of the curse in Gen 3. Three things are addressed and three things are cursed: However, though I lean to the belief Paul is talking primarily about mankind I am not totally convinced this is not also talking about all of creation. There is figurative and metaphorical language here. What I am cautious of though is reading too much into this especially concerning the fall of Adam. Even if Paul is referring to all of creation, I still don't see how you can categorically state that this implies that all of creation was immortal and without death until Adam's fall. To me it seems two separate unconnected concepts which is not clearly defined in Scripture. Just my two cents.1) the serpent is addressed, and is cursed to crawl on his belly 2) the woman is addressed, and is cursed with pain in childbirth 3) the man is addressed, and the ground is cursed to bring forth thorns and thistles so that it is difficult for man to till it There is no mention that any other parts of creation are cursed beyond these three. Anything beyond what is mentioned in the text is merely inference and speculation. It makes sense that the serpent and the woman are cursed, but why is the ground cursed instead of the man? I have some ideas, and I see a connection between the address to the woman and the man. But what do the rest of you think about this?"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2162 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Faith writes:
Yes, but we must be very careful not to treat speculative inferences as if they were inspired Scripture. This is tantamount to "adding to Scripture", which Jesus and John warn us strongly against.
But inference that is based on the whole tenor of scripture is quite proper and even required, and I've given a long paragraph of my inferences, again, in the previous post. Faith writes: It's pretty strange that you say the man was not cursed since after all eating of the forbidden tree brought death to him and all his posterity. We find him and Eve cowering in fear of God after their sin, and now ashamed of their bodies which they feel the need to cover with fig leaves. A GREAT change is implied by this (they've lost their spiritual faculties and spiritual connection with God and become merely "flesh" which will also die in due time), and if you don't want to call it a "curse" I don't know what other word would be strong enough to convey the actual situation. Sorry for being unclear. Yes, of course man received death as a punishment for his sin. But I was referring to the explicit set of curses in Gen 3:14-19. Here only three things are addressed and three are cursed. The odd part is verse 17:
quote:Note that here God addresses Adam but curses the ground, not Adam. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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