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Have you read "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" by Mark Noll? He was one of my professors, and I also worked for him, and I think he's brilliant.

Anyway the book is about how evangelicals have become anti-intellectual and what to do about it.

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John Earp

It is often asserted in this forum that one cannot "eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" and of "the tree of life" at the same time.

Iconoclast

Hebrews 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

If you really want to understand the nature of the knowledge of good and evil and why this knowledge blocks our ability to love one another then you are going to have to do some serious chewing on some really solid food. This link is a good start:

http://www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1111&whichpage=1&ARCHIVE=

Although, I must caution that to even comprehend the discussion on this link it is probably necessary to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's books "Ethics" and "Creation and Fall".

thanks,
Iconoclast



"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Edited by - Iconoclast on 05/24/2003 08:36:04 AM

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Thanks, Ike. I've studied _The Cost of Discipleship_, but to be totally honest with you (as opposed to lying to you) Bonhoeffer's ideas on ethics have always seemed completely mystifying to me. To say things like, "There is no Christian ethic" and then to commence writing about ethics, seems to me nothing more than nonsense, if ever there were nonsense. Bonnie lost me on that one. I did very much like Cost of Discipleship, though.

That said, it seems to me that at the very least Doc and those who agree with him on this issue are elevating an allegorical interpretation of Genesis into a dogma. How this idea of his is congruent with "faith that satisfies the mind" does not at all seem evident.




"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.

revivaltheology.net


Edited by - John Earp on 05/25/2003 01:57:30 AM

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So, I'd wager there are many who find the discussions as they have become--unencumbered by the difficulties of bowing to Scripture-- intellectually satisfying.

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When Jesus died on the cross for SINNERS - that very act blew away any concept of an ETHIC. It blew away any concept of God's "justice".

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Regarding the tree of knowledge of good/evil vs. tree of life issue, I don't think there is any opposition between the two. In my view, the purpose of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was to set a boundary (a "thou shalt not") to test Adam and Eve. Thus, the very presence of the tree and God's prohibition concerning it gave them "knowledge of good and evil". That is, the tree gave them a concrete point of reference to distinguish that which accords with God's will (good) and that which does not (evil). Prior to eating the tree they already had all the theoretical knowledge of good and evil necessary. It was the prohibition that gave them that knowledge, not the eating of the tree (cf. Rom 3:20, "through the Law comes the knowledge of sin."). What they got when they ate the tree was not new knowledge but a new experience, evil--they experienced from the inside what they already understood from the outside.

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Can we say it this way: In the kingdom of God, where the Christian will eventually live unobstructed by sin and evil, true life consists of a nature completely free from sin; there is no law or ethic to live by, because where there is only love there is no evil (or anything else) to call one into check, which is just what an ethic does. In other words, we won't need ethics anymore.

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The truth is that there is NO Christian ethic.

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When I read this quote? What I see in type before my eyes is what one theologian called, "Christian anarchy."


Brandon
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.--Isa 49:15-16

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The truth is that there is NO Christian ethic.

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When I read this quote? What I see in type before my eyes is what one theologian called, "Christian anarchy."

Iconoclast

So, is "Christian anarchy" where we all freely choose to love one another because we are loved? Sounds like the Garden of Eden.

Do we obey God's command to love one another because it is the "ethical" thing to do? If so, then are we really loving one another? Or are we seeking to gain our own life based on being "good?"

thanks,
Iconoclast


"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Edited by - Iconoclast on 05/26/2003 3:04:23 PM

www.jbburnett.com/yannaras/yannaras-pietism.html
1. The historical coordinates
2. The theological coordinates
3. The moral alienation of salvation
4. The moral assimilation of heresies
5. The individualistic "culture" of pietism

www.jbburnett.com/yannaras/yannaras-canons.html


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Additional Note: The body of the Church has no other hypostasis, whether legal or administrative, apart from the eucharistic assembly. The eucharistic synaxis constitutes, realizes and manifests the Church. The ability to represent the eucharistic body cannot be invested in an impersonal administrative structure or organizational mechanism, of in some founding charter or constitution made up of canons; it cannot constitute a "legal person." The only possible way in which the eucharistic body can be represented is through a natural person, the person of the father of the synaxis who is the bishop, "as type and in place of Christ." For the Church is a reality of life, and life has only a personal existence and hypostasis. The bishop embodies and sums up the life of the Church, her personal mode of existence, the fact of personal communion and relationship which constitutes the Church. This again is why the bishop is above the canons, since he embodies and sums up all that the canons simply indicate and delimit. And at the same time, because the canons delimit the life of the Church, it is they that indicate also whether the bishop is representing her truth genuinely or unworthily; but again, not as a code which constitutes and exhausts the identity of the Church body, but as limits and pointers to life, which has solely a personal existence and hypostasis. Furthermore, the canons which "define" and judge the integrity or unworthiness of the bishop are themselves defined by the synod of bishops, since the bishops represent and express the feeling and experience of each local Church. Not even an ecumenical council is an autonomous structure or a legal person with impersonal jurisdiction over that of the bishop. The way the life of the Church is represented and summed up in the person of the bishop follows from the truth of the personal mode of existence which the Church embodies. It is therefore also the ultimate hazard for the Church, her historical adventure. How much the body of the Church has suffered from bishops who were unworthy or had no understanding of their office is well known, from history and present-day experience alike. Holy bishops are as rare as holy lay people. For this is our truth, the truth of our human nature which does not cease to be sinful even when embodied in the persons of bishops. Yet the sins of bishops do not remove the possibility of salvation, any more than do the sins of lay people-- on the contrary, they underline the marvelous paradox of salvation celebrated in the eucharistic body. When the Church is subject to impersonal structures and legal codes, however, and to charters and constitutions of canons unrelated to the personal adventure of freedom and repentance, then that does distort the truth of the Church; it destroys the possibility of salvation and removes man's hope of life.

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A few other portions from Yannaras, that were in the ETHICS thread are:

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(from Christos Yannaras' "The Freedom of Morality", SVP)

Ch. 1 -- The Masks of Morality and the Ethos of the Person, pp. 16-18
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In the tradition of the Orthodox Church, we define morality through studying the existential truth of man. This means beginning with the ontological question: what is being, and what does it mean for man to be? What relationship is there between what he is as a biological entity and being in itself, the definitive and immutable potential for existence? Does the individual distinctiveness of each human being, the unique distinct and unrepeatable expression of his physical build, his speech, his thought, his creative capacity and his love, partake in being and have ontological substance? Or is it simply an ephemeral and incidental biological differentiation, inexorably predetermined by the necessity of man's "species" or "nature"?

It is clear the without answering the question about being, about the boundless and true portal for existence, it is impossible to approach the existential adventure of man's freedom -- the way he preserves or loses the universal potentialities for life, which is to say his morality. In the Orthodox Church, therefore, when we are to study the truth about man and his morality we start with the truth about being with its source and cause: we start from the acceptance of God's revelation, from the truth about God.

And this is from something I'd answered to Meph once:


from The Freedom of Morality, by Christos Yannaras, SVP)

(Unpacking that... The PROBLEM is our "autonomy and self-sufficiency". (Sin) The "individual biological entity", I think, refers to our mortality. The sin-death-sin-death-sin... cycle that we can not break by ourselves. That Christ took on himself and "broke" on the cross -- "trampling down death by death."

The SOLUTION is "the divine and human natures. . .joined. . .in the person of Christ", "a new humanity which exists in communion with the Father".

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Thanks Brett for this illustration of our 'sin problem'...

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Not only is evil NOT ontological. The "good" that is in relation to evil is also NOT ontological. This "good" only has meaning in relation to "evil". Thus this "good and evil" do not really even exist - there is NO "good and evil" - there is only union with God and disunion with God - which is to say Life and Death

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