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

Merv -

In answer to your question at the end: I did say something similar on pages 125-127 of The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross and in other places.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Merv
  To: Gregory Arago ; asa@calvin.edu ; George Murphy
  Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 11:23 PM
  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.

  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? 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

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Received on Sun Sep 2 13:29:02 2007