Hi Mike, you wrote:
>I bet you knew I would respond to this.
>
>You wrote: In what manner are we, his stumbling creatures, like the Most High
>God? Do we possess His holiness, or His righteousness? Can we boast of His
>wisdom? Are we omnipotent? Can we transcend time? Is it in our power to
>forgive sin? Can we grant immortality? No, we mere mortals presume too
>much.
>
>Can't we ask the same things about Adam?
Adam didn't do any better than any of us would have done, not knowing
the outcome in advance. That's not my point. The "image of God" has
been blown all out of proportions by Bible expositors who had no clue
what was going on. If we defined the term simply as "something or
someone who represents," we would be far closer to the meaning as
used in Scripture.
Adam was God's representative. That's it! That's all of it! You
and I can represent God IF we conform to the image of Christ. And we
won't possess His holiness, or His righteousness, etc. And neither
did Adam.
>You say Adam was created in God's image and that no human being before him or
>after him, except Jesus Christ, was so created.
Of course we know Christ was not created.
> But I see Adam as a man just
>like us. He was created with the ability to sin and, evidently, the
>propensity to sin. For sin he did. You say God created Adam to serve as his
>representative to bring a knowledge of God to a world of ungodly men. But
>certainly God knew from the beginning the outcome. That being the case, He
>could have only created Adam as some sort of demonstration, to illustrate a
>point, to teach a lesson.
God created Satan too. Knowing the outcome, why didn't God just
stick with Gabriel and the rest of the heavenly host who remained
faithful. I don't know. When, what, where, how questions have
answers. Why questions, as they pertain to the deity, will always
remain elusive.
>I say Adam was created by God, not as God's representative to man, but as
>man's representative to God.
The "image of Baal" represented Baal to the pagans. It was not a
representative of the pagans to Baal. Graven images represented gods
to the Israelites, and were repeatedly condemned in the Old
Testament. But I see your point, and certainly you could view it
that way.
> Adam was a man just like us. The only difference
>being that he was put into a paradise, without a problem in the world. So
>when he sinned he couldn't rightly blame his failings on his tough lot in
>life. Adam's failure in paradise proved that none of us, with all of our
>problems, stresses and temptations, can ever live a perfectly righteous life.
>Adam proved that all mankind, though created in God's image in a limited way,
>are not nearly as righteous as God, since unlike God we have both the ability
>and the propensity to sin. Adam proved that because we all "fall short of the
>glory of God," we are all unworthy of eternal life. Adam proved that because
>we are, we all need God's forgiveness, which He freely offers to us all by
>means of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
No argument from me.
>The questions you asked to prove that sinful predamic men and postadamic men
>could not possibly be the ones that Gen. 1:27 is referring to as having been
>created in God's image I'll now ask you about Adam.
>
>In what manner was Adam, His stumbling creature, like the Most High God? Did
>Adam possess His holiness, or His righteousness? Could Adam boast of His
>wisdom? Was Adam omnipotent? Could Adam transcend time? Was it in Adam's
>power to forgive sin? Could Adam grant immortality?
>
>If you maintain that Adam was any more created in God's image than his
>contemporary Sumerian neighbors, and all of us living today, I think you
>presume too much for Adam.
Again, I think Adam was special. He lived for 930 years. You and I
won't do that. If the legend of Adapa is a semi-mythological tale
about him, it gives us some inkling of what kind of man he was. Adam
of the Bible and Adapa of Amorite legend were both human sons of God,
or a god. According to the legend, Adapa was a sage, a profoundly
wise man, in Eridu.
Adam was told "by the sweat of his face" he would eat "bread," and
Adapa was a baker by trade. Adapa was deprived of eternal life by
not eating or drinking the "food or water of life," while Adam was
cut off from eating the fruit of the "tree of life."
Regarded as a prophet or seer, Adapa had been priest of the temple of
Ea at Eridu. He is described as "blameless," "clean of hands,"
"anointer and observer of laws." Could that also describe Adam, the
first type of Christ? Also, Adam was taken from the ground; in the
Hebrew: 'adam from 'adamah. How close phonetically is 'adamah to
Adapa? Even in Sumerian the word for "pasture land" is 'adam.
Did Adam's Fall affect following generations? These two lines are
part of one Adapa fragment:
[...] what ill he has brought upon mankind,
[And] the disease that he brought upon the bodies of men ...
So whatever source we use for information about him, the least we
could say is that Adam was unique.
Yours in Christ,
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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