ORIGINAL SIN ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL

http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.10.en.original_sin_according_to_st._paul.01.htm

• Fallen Creation
• The Justice of God and Law
• The Destiny of Man and Anthropology
  • The Destiny of Man
  • Anthropology of St. Paul

Synthetic Observations

Concluding

Thanks.

I haven’t had enough time to get through all the posts and I think this post may take up all the rest of the time I have for today, but here are my thoughts.

I unfortunately don’t know all the views of the atonement, but is there one that’s kinda like a “replacement parts for the broken/disabled machine” one? This idea I have is probably nothing new, but it’s helping me make sense of the atonement…

If you get into a car wreck, sometimes you can still drive that car though it’s not at optimum level. To fix it, you need replacement parts because it can’t fix itself. So there’s the first point: we’re broken machines; we can’t fix ourselves; we need another car that has all the replacement parts necessary – another car of the same make and model – in order for our car to run at optimum level again.

Now will any type of car do? No. The special angelic model won’t work; the pigeon-model won’t work. They are of a different type of car (another analogy: like different blood types). I even think that the God-model wouldn’t work. (Yes, God can make individual human parts, but then that forgets about the whole corporate body of believers. It becomes too individualistic and I think that was never God’s plan. This goes along with the “one and the many” idea.) We need another human model, specifically the Adam-model. Vroom vroom.

Now here’s the key thing here (and let’s see if this is just too elementary or heretical… hmm, maybe I’ll be joining a heretic camp): why did Jesus have to be fully God and fully man? Again, the only type that would work is an identical model. But one “man” is not enough for the many. You need an uncountable amount of parts available, so that quantity is found only in God. So here’s the composition of the type needed: Quality from the humanity of Jesus; Quantity from the deity of Jesus. But for this to work, God had to experience death as well. (Am I a heretic yet?) Of course these are just my current thoughts. If the idea doesn’t fly, I’ll just sideline it.

Why did Jesus have to die? That was the only way the “parts” could be distributed. If you remove the parts from the pristine car to replace the broken parts of the old car, the new car will no longer will drive. So, for Jesus, the only way to create enough replacement parts was through death – and the number of parts isn’t a “countable” number, but rather “uncountable” (kinda like how the loaves and the fish were, though the people themselves were countable.)

So here’s the last thing: why couldn’t God just forgive and get on with it? Well, I think it has to do with the difference between forgiveness and sanctification that I wrote about back on page 1. God can forgive and does, but in order to have a right relationship with God, we must also be in pristine condition (hence needing replacement parts) in order to appreciate and reciprocate love at the maximum amount possible. Did he have to die specifically on the cross? No. Sometimes when looking at a cross, I picture an electric chair in order to get a sense of the humiliation that the cross symbolized (I mean, imagine if we wore electric chairs on our necklaces instead of crosses. People nowadays would consider us wierdos, but that's part of the point of the cross - the humiliation aspect - that has been forgotten as time has gone on. We worship the innocent one who was condemned to death row). But I think he did it at that time because it was at a sort of crossroads regarding world events and the direction the world was taking at that point.

Ok, hopefully my analogy makes sense and hopefully this isn’t too elementary.  Again, I haven’t studied the different views of the atonement at any great depth, though I do think each view that I've learned about gives some correct account of the atonement, but none really stands alone as far as I can tell. IOW, each view has some truth to it - something to bring to the table - but I'm not sure if any single one explains the atonement exhaustively...right?

Post Edited (Violin for God) : 11/3/2006 11:58:33 AM (GMT-6)

Zach: If we are going to continue believing that death is a necessary ingredient of forgiveness, then we must come up with some compelling reason why God chooses to make it necessary. Of course that last sentence makes little if any sense, so I don't think God "made death a necessary ingredient of forgiveness." Death is bad. It is the consequence of sin. Death is what happens when forgiveness is refused.

Jeff: I see this as restating the problem in a different form. Why, IOW, is death necessarily a consequence of sin? Surely God could keep a sinner alive forever if He wanted to, eh?

Here's my thoughts at this point: It makes more sense to me to say that God requires perfect intimacy (i.e., sinlessness) because He can. He is competent to obtain perfect intimacy, and He desires it. The two combined lead to the conclusion that perfection simply MUST be.

But God is not a willy-nilly, arbitrary, or capricious person. He has created a moral order. The Fall has affected the implementaion of that moral order. God is affecting the perfection He desires in a way that is best fitted to His rational, benevolent nature given the constraints that the Fall has imposed upon Him. I think God, to be victorious, will not concede to Satan by resorting to arbitrary power to accomplish His purpose. He accomplishes His ends as close to the plan A method as possible, even if He, Himself, must suffer to do so.

This is where substitution/imputation comes in. This is what shows His righteousness, as Rom 3 says. It demonstrates that God will remain faithful to the original moral order. To do otherwise is to concede victory, in a sense, to Satan. It is like saying that God had to abandon His originally intended moral order to accomplish His purpose--as if Satan could substantially frustrate His purpose. Rather, in awe-inspiring wisdom, God actually has Satan bring about the very act of redemption in poetic irony--God's way of showing the utter futility of trying to outwit Him.

In short, substitutionary atonement is a work of art that demonstrates (hence the phrase "God has set forth ... to declare" in Rom. 3) the fidelity (and, hence, righteousness) of God. It shows that He can be trusted to remain faithful to the maintenance of the moral order. This is why Paul, in that same epistle says more than once something to this affect, "Is there then unrighteousness with God? In no wise!"

This is why the word "propitiation" (or appeasement/satisfaction) is used there in Rom. 3. It shows that nothing short of substitution/imputation was suitable or satisfying to God in the act of forgiveness/justification, given the moral order He has created. It has nothing to do with His power, per se--or even His holiness. For He could forgive without the death of His Son. But God can have perfection (perfect beauty/intimacy) and therefore He will have it (why settle for less)? And the mode of attaining perfection is characterized by aesthetic/moral quality as surely as is the final result, itself.

But, yes, it was also an act of love. And as such, it is also an example of the extent to which love will go. But neither of these facts rule out Paul's reasoning. All three can be true. 

Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/2/2006 8:26:18 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/2/2006 10:18:18 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 11/3/2006 12:05:20 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/3/2006 8:30:08 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/3/2006 12:24:31 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/3/2006 12:42:32 PM (GMT-6)

VFG: Jeff, can you clarify a bit? I don't understand some parts of your question, like the "ill-desert" and love being "constrained by the means-ends relationships inherent in the moral order."

Jeff: Ill-desert, to me, has the connotation that a consequence or effect of an action is "fitted" to it. This grounds the utility of LFW. If any action could produce any effect, how would our intelligence be valuable for action? No decision could be made intelligently. But once actions have their corresponding effect/consequences, intelligence has a valuable role to play in LFW decisions.

But when it comes to the moral order, things are a bit more complex than the purely natural order. I know if I stick my hand in the fire, I'll get burnt. But I know if I steal from my neighbor, I might just get richer at his expense. So how do humans conclude that one ought not steal? Because they know that there is a moral order with fitting consequences that are not always manifest in this world. Without these just, other-worldly consequences, one could never have enough knowledge to make an intelligent decision. Things are just too complex to know how to maximize one's satisfaction if this world is the whole show. And this would render the moral order very problematic. Which would in turn imply something about God's character that is not true.

So the continuation of the current fallen system is most benevolently viewed as one where post-mortem consequences simplify the information necessary to make intelligent decisions. People naturally, because it is most benevolent to do so, believe that the golden rule has a kind of reciprocal accountability to it. I.e., you should treat others as you would have them treat you because ultimately that's pretty much how you will be treated. This renders the order systematic and rational such that their intelligence is competent to decide meaningfully and successfully for their own satisfaction.

This, however, implies that God (i.e., the creator of the system) is the just governor of the world. This in turn, to my mind, is the grounds of the biblical statements that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. It is the beginning because it is the most fundamental notion of God's benevolence. It implies that He is interested in us having the information we need to decide intelligently for our own good.

But God honors this very kind of means-ends system in working out redemption. It would be contrary to His goals of self-revelation and benevolence to act within this kind of system arbitrarily by pure brute force; with no respect for the qualitative aspects of the causal flow of becoming inherent in it. Thus substitution is deemed by the rational and benevolent creator of this system as the fit mode of affecting forgiveness for us. It renders the moral order as true and leaves it intact. God thereby remains faithful (He is not the author of confusion) to leave the system intelligible to us as LFW creatures, and yet it provides a way for God to attain all of His benevolent ends despite sin.

To use dispositional language, God's purposes flow out of His loving and relational disposition. This takes two forms--1) His original plan for optimal bliss free of any gratuitious suffering and despair [this is what open theism buys us, philosophically], and 2) His contingency plans which are worked out as benevolently as possible and with full respect for the created characteristics of the moral order which are inherited from the original plan/order. And one of those characteristics of the original plan is the provision for sufficient knowledge for LFW creatures to deliberate intelligently about one's sentient satisfaction. This includes the requirement of sufficiently understandable consequences. 

But this further implies the existence of post-mortem consequences, given the Fall. Because apart from post-mortem consequences, there is never enough information to know how to maximize one's sentient satisfaction. Which means people would basically have to guess and gamble much of the time about what to do. For without the assumption that one's own satisfaction is ultimately attained by loving one's neighbor via the golden rule (despite the seeming futility of it in the short run), there is no epistemological way to make moral sense out of the world. It would, in fact, be no order at all. This is why no moral philosopher has ever come near accounting for a moral system that was both 1) significantly benevolent, and 2) understandable by the average person.

Christ, in laying out the principle of the golden rule, was not philosophizing something difficul. The golden rule is grounded in one of the most intuitive notions of the human mind—analogy.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 11/3/2006 4:06:56 PM (GMT-6)