An Important Point about Original Sin and our Fallen Nature

[MatthewG]

Similarities between Calvinism and Universalism.

Dont know.


God just existing it seems darkness was there, remember the first view verses of the bible?

I have no problem with God by his goodness, and his light, that darkness is also there, around.

Satan fell somehow, perhaps it was the darkness,

GOD had to create us with a free will so that we could fully join HIM in the heavenly marriage based upon true love but that left it open for some to rebuke HIM as a bad prospect for a husband and as a false god.

Gen 3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent told her. 5“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Is this a lie?

No, it is supposedly proven to be the truth in Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one OF us, to know good and evil:
OR IS IT???

On the surface the serpent's claim she would become like God, (keelyohim) seems be the same as GOD’s claim that Adam and Eve had become like one of us, except the prefix is different which contains an interesting anomaly…

The serpent’s suggestion in Gen 3:5: that she would be like God: כֵּֽ is a Hebrew prefix, meaning "as/like”
430
kê·lō·hîm,
כֵּֽאלֹהִ֔ים)

and OF US is
4480 [e]
mim·men·nū,
מִמֶּ֔נּוּ

OF: Strong’s 4480 mim … a part of; hence (prepositionally), from or out of in many senses (as follows):--above, after, among, at, because of, by (reason of), from (among), that is, as a separation!

AND
OF: Brown-Driver-Briggs: מִ mim, Strong’s 4480; is a "preposition expressing the idea of separation", hence out of, from, on account of, off, etc. with verbs expressing (or implying) separation or removal, whether from a person or place, or in any direction, also from guilt, calamity, etc. thus to descend from, the idea of separation, away from, far from, out of, out of Egypt or far from... so the words actually read: like us out from us

How the early Rabbis decided this preposition of separation was in this case one of inclusion would seem to have been a theologically driven (ie, eisegesis) rather than a common usage of this word. In ordinary use, this preposition seems to say the man is become as one OUT FROM (AMONG) us, to know good and evil, a rather predictable statement about a sinner, rather than become as one OF us, knowing good and evil... Since 'knowing' contains the meaning of 'having a practical experience of,' I contend that GOD does not know any evil at all but knows all about it. Thus the notion of becoming like GOD by the practice of, the experience of, evil is just plain wrong.

LIKE GOD is not the same as LIKE ONE GONE OUT FROM OR REMOVED FROM US though the English like GOD and like one of us makes them seem to be exactly the same!

God is not saying they must be removed from the tree of life because they are like HIM but because their new knowledge by their experience of evil removes them from HIM ! a much more Christian interpretation of what happens to our relationship with GOD when we sin! Sinful evil people living forever in HIS creation would be anathema to the GOD who is Righteous!!

Therefore this verse does not support the idea that GOD is the repository of all knowledge of evil by experience but, though HE knows all about evil, HE does NOT know the experience of evil as there is no evil in HIM and Light cannot create dark.

Like i just told the other guy.


I aint gonna sit here and try to make a firm stance on anything other than what God is capable of creating.

I am not saying God does evil.

 

[sawdust]

I am agreeing with you! That's how I know that GOD did not make us inherit any separation from HIM from Adam by HIS will, not our own will!!!!

Read my signature on every post!

I have signatures turned off.

I'm a bit confused by your statement here. Are you saying we are not separated from God at birth?

 

[TedT]

Satan fell somehow, perhaps it was the darkness,

My interpretation of the fall is that Satan and his angels did not know he was choosing darkness but only knew he was choosing to reject a liar and a false god which is, in fact, a goodness.

Since everyone knew that this choice defined their eternal fate, I believe that everyone knew exactly what every jot and tittle meant to their fate for either pov, ie, IF YHWH was telling the truth or if HE was indeed lying. Otherwise it was not a real choice for a future you wanted but only a guess built on nothing.

They took a serious and long look at YHWH's definitions of reality and holiness and damnation, and salvation from sin etc, and decided that HE was so out of it in a psychotic megalomanic delusion that they were willing to go to his imaginary hell rather than ever bow to him as a God let alone as a husband and have to live under HIS laws and rules about holiness forever! Biiiiig oops!!!

This is their free will sin hat was unforgivable...

Most people chose to either commit to HIM fully or to at least commit to HIM until they got the promise of election to salvation before they rebelled, ie, they chose to be holy and elect angels or the sinful but good (elect) sheep / seeds gone astray into sin.

 

[TedT]

I have signatures turned off.

I'm a bit confused by your statement here. Are you saying we are not separated from God at birth?

I believe that we are separated from GOD looooong before our existence on earth and only by our own free will decision to rebel against HIS rules... because I do not believe that our conception is our creation - a theory which that just does not add up without a whooooole lot of sophisticated eisegesis.

 

[sawdust]

I believe that we are separated from GOD looooong before our existence on earth and only by our own free will decision to rebel against HIS rules... because I do not believe that our conception is our creation - a theory which that just does not add up without a whooooole lot of sophisticated eisegesis.

Ok. I can agree we were always in the mind of God long before we set foot on earth but as to being actually created and waiting around somewhere? I can't swallow that.

I must confess, when I hear terms like "sophisticated eisegesis", I wonder if it is merely a term meaning eisegesis with a lot of twists and turns as to be unrecognisable.

Please understand, I'm not dismissing you here, I have scriptural reasons for saying what I said. If you want to start a thread or already have one going on this topic, I'm happy to discuss.

 

[MatthewG]

My interpretation of the fall is that Satan and his angels did not know he was choosing darkness but only knew he was choosing to reject a liar and a false god which is, in fact, a goodness.

Since everyone knew that this choice defined their eternal fate, I believe that everyone knew exactly what every jot and tittle meant to their fate for either pov, ie, IF YHWH was telling the truth or if HE was indeed lying. Otherwise it was not a real choice for a future you wanted but only a guess built on nothing.

They took a serious and long look at YHWH's definitions of reality and holiness and damnation, and salvation from sin etc, and decided that HE was so out of it in a psychotic megalomanic delusion that they were willing to go to his imaginary hell rather than ever bow to him as a God let alone as a husband and have to live under HIS laws and rules about holiness forever! Biiiiig oops!!!

This is their free will sin hat was unforgivable...

Most people chose to either commit to HIM fully or to at least commit to HIM until they got the promise of election to salvation before they rebelled, ie, they chose to be holy and elect angels or the sinful but good (elect) sheep / seeds gone astray into sin.

Ok

 

[civic]

All humans since Adam have a fallen nature.

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”

1. Given the above, God is under NO obligation to even OFFER salvation to anyone, let alone save us. If God lets us all go to hell for eternal punishment and suffer his wrath, that is justice. It's not hatred. It's justice.

2. Now, what if God shows mercy? Mercy is by definition compassion or forgiveness shown to someone for whom punishment or harm would normally be the just action.

3. If God shows mercy to some but not all, is God unjust? No, both the ones to whom he shows mercy and the ones to whom he shows no mercy are deserving of His wrath.

4. But that's unfair, you may argue. If God shows mercy to some, He must show it to all, right? Wrong. See point 1, above. Nobody deserves mercy. To call God unfair, unjust, or unloving is to deny the fact that we are all fallen and come under the above scripture reference that there is no one righteous, not even one.

The imaginary sin nature-original sin. Death passed to all men, not sin. no one is guilty of sin until they commit sin, not prior.

Ezekiel 18:4
For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die

Ezekiel 18:20
“The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son.”

Deuteronomy 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

2 Kings 14:6
Yet he did not put the sons of the murderers to death, but acted according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the LORD commanded: "Fathers must not be put to death for their children, and children must not be put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

Jeremiah 31:30
Instead, each will die for his own iniquity. If anyone eats the sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.

 

[civic]

Augustine and Pelagius

Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin was born from his attempt to combat the heresy of Pelagianism. The controversy began in Rome when the British monk, Pelagius, opposed Augustine’s prayer: “Grant what you command, and command what you desire”. Pelagius was opposing the idea that the divine gift of grace was necessary to perform the will of God. Pelagius believed that if we are responsible for obeying the commandments of God, then we must all also have the ability to do so without divine aid. He went on to deny the doctrine of Ancestral Sin, arguing that the consequences of Adam’s sin are not passed on to the rest of mankind. Adam’s sin affected Adam alone, and thus infants at birth are in the same state as Adam was before the Fall.

Augustine took a starkly different view of the Fall, arguing that mankind is utterly sinful and incapable of good. Augustine believed that the state of Original Sin leaves us in such a condition that we are unable to refrain from sin. The ‘image of God’ in man (i.e., free will) was destroyed by the Fall. As much as we may choose to do good, our evil impulses pervert our free will and compel us to do evil. Therefore we are totally dependent upon grace.

So far did Augustine take his grim view of the human condition, that he argued not only that the Original Sin effects all of Adam’s descendants, but that each person is guilty of the Original Sin from birth (Original Guilt). Infants are therefore guilty of sin and thus infants who die before baptism, in which (according to Augustine) the guilt of Original Sin is removed, are condemned to perdition and cannot be saved. As if that was not bad enough, Augustine went on to formulate the doctrine of Predestination, which affirms that God has foreordained who will be saved and who will not.

Augustine prevailed and Pelagius was condemned as a heretic by Rome at the Council of Carthage in 418. It seemed that Pelagius’ views were more reprehensible to the Latin Church than the idea of predestination and babies burning in hell – views that the Latin Church was not only willing to tolerate, but even willing to champion as Orthodox doctrine!


St John Chrysostom

Between Augustine and Pelagius there appeared to be no middle-way in the West. A different view, however, was expressed in the East by Augustine’s contemporary, John Chrysostom. The dispute between Augustine and Pelagius had not reached the East, and so Chrysostom’s views were not so agitated by heated disputes and polemics. Were Chrysostom involved in the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, perhaps his teaching on Ancestral Sin would have prevailed over both Pelagius and Augustine alike, but considering that the sole concern of the Latin Church seemed to be the condemnation of Pelagianism, it is probably more likely that he would have been condemned as semi-pelagian.https://pemptousia.com/2017/02/original-sin-orthodox-doctrine-or-heresy/#_edn1 Whatever the case, Chrysostom’s views on the subject have never enjoyed the attention they deserve, and the heated nature of the dispute in the West meant that the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’ as expounded by Augustine was regarded as the only safeguard against the heresy of Pelagianism.

Chrysostom, while claiming that all human beings are made in the image of God, believed that the Ancestral Sin brought corruptibility and death not only to Adam but to all his descendants, weakening his ability to grow into God’s likeness, but never destroying God’s image (free will). Chrysostom is a major voice within a consensus of Greek patristic writers who interpret the Fall as “an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality”.[ii] Chrysostom’s position is echoed, for example, by St Athanasius the Great and St Cyril of Alexandria, who claimed that we are not guilty of Adam’s sin, though we inherit a corrupted nature; but our free will remains intact. This Greek patristic interpretation is founded upon Romans 5:12: “As sin came into the world through one man, and through sin, death, so death spread to all men because all men have sinned”[iii]. John Meyendorff explains how the deficient Latin translation of the text may have contributed to such a stark difference in the Latin interpretation of the Ancestral Sin:

‘In this passage there is a major issue of translation. The last four Greek words were translated in Latin as in quo omnes peccaverunt (“in whom [i.e., in Adam] all men have sinned”), and this translation was used in the West to justify the guilt inherited from Adam and spread to his descendants. But such a meaning cannot be drawn from the original Greek’.[iv]

St Cyril of Alexandria explained the passage in this way:

“How did many become sinners because of Adam?… How could we, who were not yet born, all be condemned with him, even though God said, ‘Neither the fathers shall be put to death because of their children, nor the children because of their fathers, but the soul which sins shall be put to death’? (cf. Deut. 24:18) … we became sinners through Adam’s disobedience in such manner as this: he was created for incorruptibility and life, and the manner of existence he had in the garden of delight was proper to holiness. His whole mind was continually beholding God; his body was tranquil and calm with all base pleasures being still. For there was no tumult of alien disturbances in it. But because he fell under sin and slipped into corruptibility, pleasures and filthiness assaulted the nature of the flesh, and in our members was unveiled a savage law. Our nature, then, became diseased by sin through the disobedience of one, that is, of Adam. Thus, all were made sinners, not by being co-transgressors with Adam,… but by being of his nature and falling under the law of sin… Human nature fell ill in Adam and subject to corruptibility through disobedience, and, therefore, the passions entered in”.[v]


St John Cassian

The East paid little attention to Augustine, and this was largely due to language barriers. For the Eastern Christians, serious theologians wrote in Greek, and they paid little heed to Latin writers. What opposition did come from the East came from some Eastern Orthodox theologians who, for one reason or another, found themselves living in the West. Amongst the most prominent was St John Cassian. St John opposed Augustine on four major points:

1) There were clearly instances where people had come to God of their own volition, who, while called by Christ and aided by divine grace, chose to change their ways (e.g. Matthew, Paul, Zacchaeus). Therefore, it is not grace alone that saves us, but also man’s willingness to repent.

2) After the Fall, Adam and his descendants retained a knowledge of good, and an impulse, however weakened, to pursue good. Man was not, as Augustine claimed, utterly depraved and incapable of good after the Fall.

3) The ‘Image’ of God in man is sick, but not dead. The divine image is in need of healing, but this healing requires synergy (the co-operation of man’s will with divine grace).

4) God wishes all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, so those who are not saved reject salvation against His will. Predestination should be understood as foreknowledge and not as foreordination.

The West condemned St John Cassian’s views as semi-pelagian, but for the Orthodox, Cassian is one of the foremost exponents of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis.[vi] His views were supported also by Theodoret of Antioch:

“There is need of both our efforts and divine aid. The grace of the Spirit is not vouchsafed to those who make no effort, and without grace our efforts can not collect the prize of virtue”.


The Ancestral Sin and Baptism


Augustine’s view of Original Sin was the reason also for his justification of infant baptism. Believing that babies are born guilty of sin, he argued that baptism was necessary for the babies’ salvation. He saw the innocence of infants purely in terms of their being physically too weak to commit sin, but equally guilty as adults of Adam’s sin.

The Greek Fathers, having a different view of the Fall and the Ancestral Sin, interpreted the purpose of infant baptism in another way, different in important respects from the familiar Augustinian and Reformed interpretations of the West. The Greek Fathers believed that newborn infants are innocents, wholly without sin. While infants inherit a human nature which, in its wholeness, is wounded by the Ancestral Sin, weakening the will and making each person prone to sin, they are innocent of sin nonetheless. In the fourth of his catechetical homilies on baptism, St John Chrysostom states, “We do baptise infants, although they are not guilty of any sins”. For the Greek Fathers, baptism, above all else, is an acceptance by the Church and entrance of the baptised person into the redeemed and sanctified Body of Christ, the beginning of a life spent in spiritual combat and instruction in holiness on the deepening journey to the Kingdom of God.

Considering the stark contrast between the Orthodox doctrine of the Ancestral Sin and the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, and the different understanding of baptism that these doctrines lead to, is it not surprising that some Orthodox speak of baptism in Augustinian terms – of the forgiveness of Original Sin – especially considering that the Orthodox service for baptism makes not a single reference to it? The closest we come to mention of the Ancestral Sin (Πρωπατρορικό ἁμάρτημα) in baptism is in the first prayer of the Service for the Making of a Catechumen (which was originally completely separate from the service of Baptism): “Remove far from him/her that ancient error” (παλαιά πλάνη). If one of the main purposes of baptism was the forgiveness of Original Sin, surely it would be worth mentioning in the baptism service! But the idea of ‘Original Sin’ being “forgiven” is nowhere to be found in the Greek Fathers or in the hymns and prayers of the Orthodox Church. For it is an idea which is alien to Greek Patristic thought. The Ancestral Sin is a condition, primarily of mortality and corruptibility, which needs healing, an inherited ‘illness’ which means that free will – or ‘the Image of God’ as the Greek Fathers preferred to put it – though kept intact, is in need of divine grace in order to progress along the path to attaining God’s ‘likeness’, the path to theosis or ‘deification’.

Conclusion​

Bearing in mind the significant differences between the Orthodox and the Augustinian views of ‘Original Sin’, it surprises me that some Orthodox Christians are so quick to employ the term, claiming that the Orthodox Church holds to the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’, and qualifying this simply by saying that it does not embrace the doctrine of ‘Original Guilt’. I do not think that this is adequate for expounding the Orthodox position on Original Sin. Although Augustine was recognised as a saint by the Orthodox Church,[vii] it has never accepted his teaching on Original Sin. If what I have written above is correct, then the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is wholly un-Orthodox, and it led, I believe, to a whole series of heresies in the Latin Church, such as Predestination, Purgatory, Limbo and the Immaculate Conception. We Orthodox would do well to distance ourselves from the well-known Augustinian position on Original Sin by employing a less familiar term: Ancestral Sin. It is not merely a case of semantics. For an erroneous understanding of this doctrine has serious repercussions for our understanding of sin and the Fall, for grace and free will, for baptism, the human condition and man’s deification. In short, how we understand the Ancestral Sin has direct implications for our whole soteriology – our understanding of the salvation of man and the world.https://pemptousia.com/2017/02/original-sin-orthodox-doctrine-or-heresy/

hope this helps !!!

 

[praise_yeshua]

Dont know.


God just existing it seems darkness was there, remember the first view verses of the bible?

I have no problem with God by his goodness, and his light, that darkness is also there, around.

Satan fell somehow, perhaps it was the darkness,



Like i just told the other guy.


I aint gonna sit here and try to make a firm stance on anything other than what God is capable of creating.

I am not saying God does evil.

My personal belief is that this world has been judged multiple times. I believe we are surrounded by the ashes of destructions.

Remember, the book of Genesis is a retelling of oral traditions lost to humanity till Moses received the revelation upon the mountain. It is a letter to us. It details our begins. Not the begins of all the creative actions of God throughout all Eternity.

We are just a small part of something VERY BIG.....

 

[MatthewG]

My personal belief is that this world has been judged multiple times. I believe we are surrounded by the ashes of destructions.

Remember, the book of Genesis is a retelling of oral traditions lost to humanity till Moses received the revelation upon the mountain. It is a letter to us. It details our begins. Not the begins of all the creative actions of God throughout all Eternity.

We are just a small part of something VERY BIG.....

Okay.

 

[TedT]

Ok. I can agree we were always in the mind of God long before we set foot on earth but as to being actually created and waiting around somewhere? I can't swallow that.

How about: waiting in Sheol since the wicked RETURN to Sheol at death as per Ps 9:17, so they must have come from Sheol, that is, they were waiting there to be sown, not created, into the world, Matt 13:36-39. When you read Ps 9:17 in the KJV and it says the wicked are turned aside into Sheol, (almost the opposite of to return, eh?) you cannot see them as waiting around in Sheol to be sown into the world then going back there because it's just too foreign and out of context. But our pre-conception existence (PCE theology) is everywhere in the bible, just unrecognizable by most due to its not being considered (except sometimes derogatorily) in Bible Studies.

I've been teaching the PCE pov for some 15 years on 6 or 8 different forums now and don't plan to quit so if you see my name you'll find me riding my one trick pony all the time,

I must confess, when I hear terms like "sophisticated eisegesis", I wonder if it is merely a term meaning eisegesis with a lot of twists and turns as to be unrecognisable.

Exactly! Especially when the sophist part of the word is in italics!

Please understand, I'm not dismissing you here, I have scriptural reasons for saying what I said. If you want to start a thread or already have one going on this topic, I'm happy to discuss.

I have started a few topics about PCE theology but usually I question orthodoxy's theories when they are presented...

Everyone has an interpretation of every verse and that's ok. I just think that the PCE interpretation is more in sync with YHWH's attributes than the deeper look at orthodoxy allows.

My apology, in the theological sense, for the last 40 yrs or so, is:
I present the verses which witness to our pre-conception existence, along with some others which I feel make a lot more sense when they're interpreted in light of this doctrine. There is absolutely no verse in the Bible that says that the theory of our pre-conception existence is impossible so it must be wrong, not one.

Now, being that hardly anyone has searched the Scriptures from the pov of our pre-conception life, these scriptures which do hint at it have rarely been interpreted this way before in any commentary or discussion. Therefore, it stands to reason that such an exegesis of these Scriptures will be new and that it will be fairly unique, that is, that almost all the other interpretations of the same scriptures will be different.

In other words, any verse that conveys the idea of pre-existence has rarely been interpreted this way before because almost every exegete automatically looks for a different interpretation when they read such an interpretation. This being the case, a mere list of Scriptures will not constitute proof of scriptural support for this doctrine but, to provide such proof, such a list will have to be accompanied by an in-depth exegesis of the said scriptures.

Providing only a list of pertinent verses without the accompanying new exegesis would only tend to prove to its searchers that this doctrine had no scriptural support, simply because they would tend to interpret the Scriptures that supply proof of our pre-conception existence only in orthodox terms, in much the same way that everybody, especially the scholars, used to interpret the scriptures regarding the Christ King.

 

[sawdust]

I have started a few topics about PCE theology but usually I question orthodoxy's theories when they are presented...

I shall see if I can find them and update my understanding regarding what you are teaching.

One question though, how long have you studied Hebrew? (I'm assuming the majority of texts you use are from the OT)

 

[TedT]

I shall see if I can find them and update my understanding regarding what you are teaching.

One question though, how long have you studied Hebrew? (I'm assuming the majority of texts you use are from the OT)

I studied Hebrew for about two years in the mid 70s...but mostly I trust Strongs, et al.

 

[GeneZ]

The fact that, due to our fallen nature, it is just and fair for God to put everyone in hell rules out a plan to force people to go there. We're all headed there by default.

We are not responsible before God for having been born with a sin nature.
What we are responsible for is either accepting or rejecting God's solution.
The Cross.

 

[civic]

We are not responsible before God for having been born with a sin nature.
What we are responsible for is either accepting or rejecting God's solution.
The Cross.

There is no sin nature and you are accountable before God for all your sins and every word you have said.

 

[GeneZ]

There is no sin nature and you are accountable before God for all your sins and every word you have said.

You have no sin nature sir... We realize that.

You need to be more patient with those who do.

 

[civic]

You have no sin nature sir... We realize that.

You need to be more patient with those who do.

Correct I’m a sinner as a person not a sin nature that I was born with.

 

[Bob Carabbio]

All humans since Adam have a fallen nature.

Nope - we humans have the SAME NATURE that Adam was created with - a "Human Nature" which isn't any more "Fallen" now than it was before Eve ate the forbidden fruit. WHAT DID CHANGE was Adam's environment when the earth was CURSED for his sake.

 

[GeneZ]

Correct I’m a sinner as a person not a sin nature that I was born with.

A sinner is one who obeys his sin nature.

And, sometimes refuses to supply chapter and verse when claiming to not have a sin nature.

 

[GeneZ]

Nope - we humans have the SAME NATURE that Adam was created with - a "Human Nature" which isn't any more "Fallen" now than it was before Eve ate the forbidden fruit. WHAT DID CHANGE was Adam's environment when the earth was CURSED for his sake.

"For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."

1 Corinthians 15:22​

That in itself is not fallen?