RE: [asa] legitimate parallel to explain death before Adam?

Hi Merv, you wrote:

>>Paul draws us all kinds of parallels in Romans regarding, for example,
old law & new spirit, death to former, resurrection to latter, and so
forth (Romans 7) One of these explanations is as follows (beginning
Rom. 7:7): Before the law, sin was not known. In fact Paul almost
make it sound like the law is what brought sin into the world. But we
know from Romans 5:13, and later in Rom. 7, not to mention Genesis
itself that actually sin was in the world even before the law -- it just
wasn't revealed or published as such until it became illuminated under
the spot light of the law.

Now -- here is the proposed parallel: Life, (& hence the possibility
of death) was not revealed to us as such before we received our status
as "in the image of God". Once we were awakened into that gift our new
life (& hence our fallenness -- or possibility of it) became possible.
It wasn't that physical death and life hadn't existed before -- they
did, if the earth is ancient as it almost certainly is. But in Adam
death became illuminated to us by something God did -- he breathed life
into us. Just as sin pre-existed the formal law. But the law gave it
new status. Death (formerly just physical death) is now physical death
with spiritual implication packed into it and spiritual death that can
even precede it in our temporally bound view of things.

How is this sounding. Does it make sense to anybody else?<<

It made sense to Isaac de la Peyrére in 1656 who also cited Rom. 5:13
and believed that although men and sin were in the world before Adam,
the manner of sin was in the form of offenses against nature, violations
of "natural law," and all died a natural death. It was not until God
imposed moral law, with Adam the first to be subject to it, that men
were capable of "legal sin," trespasses against God's law. Beginning
with Adam's Fall, human beings die both a natural death and a "legal" or
spiritual death.

Quoting Peyrére:

Before the Law of God, or till that Law of God was violated

by Adam, sin and death were in the world, yet had gained

no power over it : they had got no lawful possession, they

had got no absolute power. The reason is, because before

that time there was no Law given by God.

I think you’re in good company Merv.

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Merv
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 11:23 PM
To: Gregory Arago; asa@calvin.edu; George Murphy
Subject: [asa] legitimate parallel to explain death before Adam?

The essay at this link was an excellent one, Greg, thank you!

One item of particular interest to me was this (excerpted here)
          The greatest problem with evolutionary creation is that it
contradicts the traditional literal interpretation of the opening
chapters of the Bible. Church history reveals that nearly all believers
have understood the creation accounts to be a record of actual
historical events. Even more troubling for evolutionary creation is the
fact that the Biblical authors, including Jesus Himself, often refer to
the early chapters of Genesis as literal history. In addition, the
origin of physical death poses a particularly acute problem for
conservative Christians who accept biological evolution. The Scriptures
clearly state that death came after the creation of humanity and that it
was a Divine judgment on the world for Adam's original sin. However,
according to evolutionary biology death existed for billions of years
prior to the appearance of the first humans. Therefore, the burning
question is, "How do evolutionary creationists interpret the first
chapters of the Bible?"
<end of excerpt>

And earlier in the essay it was stated: "In particular, this view of
origins asserts that humanity evolved from primate ancestors, and during
this natural process the Image of God arose and sin entered the world."

This particular statement was not intended to equate these two things,
but one can't help but notice that it makes it sound like our
inauguration into the image of God is equated with sin entering the
world -- definitely not the same events, and yet disturbingly paralleled
here. And it provokes an explanation into how these parallels might
work, and actually make some good sense.

 George, maybe you said some things like this in your book, and I'm just
having flashbacks and thinking the ideas are fresh. Sorry if this is
parroting somebody's work only now to surface in my thoughts.

--Merv

Gregory Arago wrote:

http://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/3EvoCr.htm
<http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Edlamoure/3EvoCr.htm>

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Received on Sun Sep 2 00:51:47 2007