Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

It's certainly true that YECs insist that a literal historical fall is essential for the Christian message. (& non-Christians arguing against the fall usae the same argument to reach the conclusion that Christianity is false!) But the claim is simply wrong. What necessitates a savior is the universality of sin, not an explanation of why sin is universal. It's remarkable how little use the NT makes of the idea of a fall. & any street corner evangelist worthy of his/her credentials will not focus on Adam but will say, in some form or other, "Thou art the man."

I hasten to add that reaching some understanding of the origin of human siunfulness that is both theologically sound & coherent with what we know of evolutionary history is important. But it is flatly wrong to say that Christianity stands or falls with such an understanding. It wasn't until the 5th century that any systematic understanding of original sin was developed. For further detail on this I'll refer to my PSCF paper at
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF6-06Murphy.pdf.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: James Mahaffy
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 6:25 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?
  .......................................

  Yet, without the backbone of a well-defined "Fall," I think we have to admit that the Christian metanarrative doesn't seem as compelling and immediate as we might like. Can you imagine a street-corner evangelist thundering about Adam the Neolithic farmer who basically lived like tens of thousands of other hard scrabble new stone age people, or Adam the mytho-poetic symbol?

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Received on Wed Jul 4 19:14:54 2007