Finally got the threads going for the online feeds. Week one in Harold's study focused on the question of whether humanity is inherently good or bad. A great lesson in history including the impact of Aristotle, Augustine and other church fathers clearly shows modern Christians how we have arrived at our present day understandings of how we are made.
Harold covers this topic in detail in his books Precious in His Sight and also in Who Is God. The conclusion... we are created in God's very image; since we live in a fallen world, there is a little bit of good in the worst of us, and a little bit of bad in the best of us.
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Wow ... I just listened to this study ... Thank you for taking the time to put this together. Please please consider putting these videos on You Tube. I would like to send them to people on my facebook.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I was studying the topic of sin and how it is "imputed" to us. In my study I focused a lot on Romans 5, disecting it verse by verse. When I did so, I found that I had to start questioning the belief that we are born sinners because I realised that the Bible wasn't actually saying that at all. I started to examine other Scriptures, just as you did in this study and discovered that - as you said - this is a doctrine that really does impact how we see ourselves. If you see yourself as being a sinner by your very nature because of Adam then how can you ever be free? You can't because as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
As you mentioned, this also then impacts how we see God. The truth is that God would be an unjust God to send us to Hell for something we were born with...
ReplyDeleteBut also, I discovered that this is a major stumbling block to the Jews (as well as Muslims and others) because they do not believe that we are born sinners. In fact, this belief is in opposition to the law and the prophets as we see in Deuteronomy 24:6, Jeremiah 31:30, and Ezekiel 18. The Word of God is clear - each person is responsible for their own sins; the son does not die for the sins of his father and the father does not die for the sins of his son.
I also like that you challenge our concept of Adam and Eve 'dying spiritually' when they ate the forbidden fruit. The Bible never ever says that they died spiritually. I have often asked people where that is in the Bible and the only Scripture they can ever point me to for that was that God said "in the day you eat of it you shall surely die" ... they ate and did not physically die so they must've died spiritually because God doesn't lie.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with drawing those conclusions is that they have missed the wonderous picture of atonement painted for us here. Physical death was the result of their sin but God postponed Adam's death by almost 1000 years by atoning for their sins by slaughtering animals to make skins that covered (atoned) them. That is why the Psalmist looks back and says ... 1000 years are to the Lord as a day and a day as 1000 years! When he said that it was in context of man's mortality.
God banished them from the Garden so that they would not eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and forever be trapped in a decaying Creation.