To the ASA group:
See my comments below.
Dave Siemens wrote on Thursday, February 10, 2000 5:17 PM,
> I've been interested in the exchange that Russ started on 9 Feb 2000.
> There are a few points to which I want to respond, without quoting
> everything that came along. In Russ's first posting, he said, "Christ's
> salvation consists in restoring that image." This was elaborated further
> down.
>
> I don't agree. I claim salvation by faith in Christ's finished work, but
> am clearly not in the condition of Adam before the fall. I still have the
> nature of Adam from after the fall and echo Paul's "O wretched man that I
> am..." I do not expect to be restored to the aboriginal nature when my
> salvation is complete. Rather, I expect to become something close to what
> Adam would have become had he resisted the temptation to become like God
> via a shortcut.
I don't know about aboriginal nature, but (Rom. 8:29) in saving us God
conforms us to the likeness of his Son. I understand that here "likeness"
is equivalent to "image."
> Russ's point 2, "Adam and Eve are the parents of the human race." answers
> Dick's notion that Adam was the father of the Semites and David's "I am
> inclined to think physical descent from Adam of all those in God's image
> is correct, but am not convinced that it is proven." when taken in
> connection with Acts 17:26: "and hath made of one blood all nations of
> men for to dwell on all the face of the earth..." I think this also bears
> on Glenn's problem with non-human hominids. IMO, whatever "cousins" we
> may have had in the past, all persons now living are descendants of the
> first man, the first entity to bear the image of God. Empirically, the
> evidence of this is that all races are completely interfertile and all
> are religious--though some of the religions are strange and some are not
> recognized as such.
>
> I would also call to Dick's attention I Corinthians 15:22: "For as in
> Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." If Adam was
> ancestor only of the Semites, then I almost certainly cannot suffer from
> Adam's fall, for I doubt that I have any Semitic ancestors. Certainly the
> Amerinds and Australian aborigines are exempt, for they were in place
> long before his date for Adam and Noah. Or was Adam's condition a virus
> or prion that was carried by the winds worldwide, one for which there is
> no immunity?
>
> Russ seems to reject allowing mankind to be related to other creatures.
> "Let's be wary of claiming that ... human beings and other primates have
> common ancestry." Why must _Homo sapiens_ be completely a new creation,
> connected to the rest of living things only by matter? Or did the matter
> also have to be specially created? Why could not God transform a bright
> beast into a man? If we take the analogy of the new creation (2
> Corinthians 5:17), what God has done is taken the old creatures and
> transformed them. He didn't have to start from scratch. Is there any
> scripture which prohibits our sharing descent with the rest of creation?
> On this I have to agree with Glenn, though I cannot push Adam and Noah
> back millions of years.
After God made Adam, he made Eve from Adam's body (Gen. 2:20-23). Later
(Gen. 3:20), "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother
of all the living." Is there any doubt that this last phrase refers to all
people? Could the author of Genesis be wrong?
If your problem is with the origin of Adam, made a living being (Gen. 2:7)
when he was created, then we have another very large discussion ahead of
us. In my original post I assumed that Adam was created de novo.
> Dick raised an objection to Russ's "Is there an objection to the idea
> that in fact [Cain] married his sister?" Or that Abraham married his
> sister (Genesis 20:12)? Apparently Dick, in citing Leviticus 18, does not
> believe in progressive revelation. Without becoming "dispensationalists,"
> I think we have to recognize the difference between the Adamic, Noahic,
> Abrahamic, Mosaic and new covenants, each of which builds on and adds to
> the previous ones. See, for example, Acts 15:20, 29, in connection with
> Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:14, Deuteronomy 12:23.
>
> I hope this is not too disjointed for those who have not been directly
> involved in the exchanges, and that there are not too many misspelled
> words. Every time recently I have tried to spell check, the computer has
> completely hung.
Russ
Russell Maatman
e-mail: rmaat@mtcnet.net
Home: 401 5th Avenue
Sioux Center, IA 51250
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