At 07:31 AM 3/10/00 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
> Shocked * dumbfounded - almost!
> The idea "that Christ had to pay the penalty for sin" is one of at least
a dozen
>"theories of the atonement" which have been held within Christianity.
This particular
>one has been very influential in the western church but no one theory has
dogmatic
>status. Most of them have been held by Christians who assumed Genesis 3
to be an
>historical account of what happened with the first humans, but could also
be held with
>small variations by those who don't.
> There are a number of ways of understanding the work of Christ & while
some of
>them may be commonly expressed in terms of a literal interpretation of
Genesis 3, they
>are not really dependent upon that. So one can't start from what Christ
did & argue
>back unambiguously to a knowledge of how sin originated.
But one doesn't have to argue backwards from Christ to how sin started. The
entire point is that the Bible purports to tell us how sin started LONG
BEFORE CHRIST WAS ON EARTH. To dismiss the Genesis 3 account as if it was
a post facto deduction ignores about 20-30 centuries of JudeoChristian
thought.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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