> And did sin enter the world by the volitional act or acts of
>humans as told in Gen. 3? If so then at some time there must have been a
>"sinless world" prior to this (these) act(s). If there were such a sinless
>world, would it be wrong to speak of the existence of a "perfect
>communion" between the Creator and His creation, protean though the
>creation may have been at this stage, and "immature" though the humans may
>have been? If it is wrong to speak of "original sin" in this way, then it
>seems hard to understand any need for atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus.
I am far from a theologian, but one way of thinking about this that is
helpful to me in my current thinking is to view Adam as innocent, not
perfect or "sinless." Just as we see infants as innocent, and recognize
that children grow and reach an ill-defined time of accountability, mankind
perhaps was in an initial stage of innocense. God's innitial
self-revelation may have been to humans who lacked any awareness of God's
expectations and of their own tendencies to disobedience. This, to me,
makes sense of the symbol of the "Tree of Good and Evil." Adam and Eve's
innocense was broken through disobedience. It was in disobedience that
they became aware of what sin was. This interpretation also makes sense of
the subsequent call to Cain to master his sin.
All theologians are now free to shoot me down. :-)
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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