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“The story of Adam and Eve, as used by the Eastern church to account for our inherited weakness to withstand temptation as an effect of Adam and Eve's sin, can fruitfully be understood today without a historical Adam and Eve but instead with an evolutionary and social understanding of human beings. In the course of biological and social evolution, any group of creatures capable of any degree of relationship to God that fails to be properly related to God commensurate with their stage of development-any such group will have some
network or other of social relations that are not as God intends. People born into a particular social group inherit that social network and act more or less in accord with it, and so inherit the effects of its sin. By being formed and shaped by the inherited social network, each individual is "weakened" in its ability to wrestle with the temptations to which its ontological nature as finite creature is subject. When a fall occurred, when a prepeople or people did not live up to the intentions of God in their common life commensurate to their stage of development, it was probably not at any one specific time; it may have occurred at different times for different groups until failure to be properly related to God was universal in all societies. But by historic times, human development is at a stage that the story of Adam and Eve is a fitting type or model of our situation in relation to God: human beings seeking to provide for themselves apart from God and God's purposes.
This ancient understanding of original sin and evil seems to me both illuminating and, with the evolutionary understanding that I have added to it, thoroughly defensible. I can easily apply it to myself and also use it to understand other people, as I have done in presenting Pascal's analysis of our condition.
Some theologians are willing to grant that the story of an actual Adam and Eve is not necessary for Christian theology, but they still hold that there had to have been a historical situation of original righteousness or innocence and an actual fall from this state. Otherwise, God, not human beings, would be responsible for our condition, and the goodness of creation would be fatally compromised.' My account does have a temporal dimension.
All of us are born without an awareness of God in our lives. God is near us as our creator, generating us each moment of time; but it is as if God is, so to speak, behind us, and we, by looking only in front of us, do not perceive God in our world at all. So we do not take God into account in our lives. This is when distortion in our hearts, minds, and desires begins to occur. Our de facto personality, with our self at the center of all reality, is innocent when we are an infant but ceases to be innocent as it is reinforced by society's way of life, encouraging us to walk away from God and so into evil. We walk away from God by pursuing earthly goods and in”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
network or other of social relations that are not as God intends. People born into a particular social group inherit that social network and act more or less in accord with it, and so inherit the effects of its sin. By being formed and shaped by the inherited social network, each individual is "weakened" in its ability to wrestle with the temptations to which its ontological nature as finite creature is subject. When a fall occurred, when a prepeople or people did not live up to the intentions of God in their common life commensurate to their stage of development, it was probably not at any one specific time; it may have occurred at different times for different groups until failure to be properly related to God was universal in all societies. But by historic times, human development is at a stage that the story of Adam and Eve is a fitting type or model of our situation in relation to God: human beings seeking to provide for themselves apart from God and God's purposes.
This ancient understanding of original sin and evil seems to me both illuminating and, with the evolutionary understanding that I have added to it, thoroughly defensible. I can easily apply it to myself and also use it to understand other people, as I have done in presenting Pascal's analysis of our condition.
Some theologians are willing to grant that the story of an actual Adam and Eve is not necessary for Christian theology, but they still hold that there had to have been a historical situation of original righteousness or innocence and an actual fall from this state. Otherwise, God, not human beings, would be responsible for our condition, and the goodness of creation would be fatally compromised.' My account does have a temporal dimension.
All of us are born without an awareness of God in our lives. God is near us as our creator, generating us each moment of time; but it is as if God is, so to speak, behind us, and we, by looking only in front of us, do not perceive God in our world at all. So we do not take God into account in our lives. This is when distortion in our hearts, minds, and desires begins to occur. Our de facto personality, with our self at the center of all reality, is innocent when we are an infant but ceases to be innocent as it is reinforced by society's way of life, encouraging us to walk away from God and so into evil. We walk away from God by pursuing earthly goods and in”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“actions. Our understanding is still clouded, and our motives are not fully ordered on God. Some of us have walked further into evil than others. So although all of us are equally sinners, initially facing away from God, we are clearly not equally evil and equally corrupted. So we have different distances to walk to return to God. Since we are now facing in the direction of God, we are justified, regarded as righteous by God, but we are still not fully conformed to God's will. Some people who have repented and begun their walk toward God are still more evil than some people who have not repented, but who have not walked as far away from God as some repentants had done.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“that exists is a contingent being. Although a contingent being exists, it might not have existed, and it can cease to exist. Neither is true
of God's being. Human beings, like all finite creatures, were created from nothing by God's word. We lack the ability to sustain ourselves. So we are liable to change and revert to nothing. Decay is a perpetual reality, and death is a perpetual threat. Only by communion with God through the good news in Christ is it possible for us to live with these liabilities fruitfully and faithfully, and finally through Christ's resurrection to overcome these natural tendencies.
Finitude itself is not equivalent to evil. It is simply an account of what it is to be in the condition of not being God, and to be always dependent on God for existence. Sin and evil arise because”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
of God's being. Human beings, like all finite creatures, were created from nothing by God's word. We lack the ability to sustain ourselves. So we are liable to change and revert to nothing. Decay is a perpetual reality, and death is a perpetual threat. Only by communion with God through the good news in Christ is it possible for us to live with these liabilities fruitfully and faithfully, and finally through Christ's resurrection to overcome these natural tendencies.
Finitude itself is not equivalent to evil. It is simply an account of what it is to be in the condition of not being God, and to be always dependent on God for existence. Sin and evil arise because”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“Evil at bottom is the refusal to recognize the reality of others, to refuse to restrain ourselves, so that another does not have room to live and develop freely.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“faith perishes if it is walled in, or confined. If it is anywhere, it must be everywhere, like God himself: if God is in your life, he is in all things, for he is God.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“conviction in the goodness of God and human responsibility for evil. The rabbis did teach that in human beings was a yetzer hara, or evil impulse, but this is not a doctrine of a fall or inherited original sin.6
Therefore, I believe we are justified, at least for the moment, to set aside the biblical story of a paradise in our discussion of original sin and evil. All theologians up to perhaps Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), the father of modern theology, assumed that the story of Adam and Eve was historical. But at the same time many early theologians, especially in the Eastern part of the church, believed that the reality of original sin could be seen to be operative in all people. This means that even though they believed in a historical Adam”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
Therefore, I believe we are justified, at least for the moment, to set aside the biblical story of a paradise in our discussion of original sin and evil. All theologians up to perhaps Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), the father of modern theology, assumed that the story of Adam and Eve was historical. But at the same time many early theologians, especially in the Eastern part of the church, believed that the reality of original sin could be seen to be operative in all people. This means that even though they believed in a historical Adam”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“to human nature as it was created. So some time after the creation, there must have been a fall. Confirmation for this view was sought in the Scriptures, and some found it in the story of the lustful angels that sexually assaulted mortal women in Genesis 6:1-4. But this interpretation of the origin of sin was largely replaced by finding the fall in the story of Adam and Eve.
According to Williams, the fact that there were two different explanations of the fall in ancient Israel is a confirmation that neither story is the real source or basis of the doctrine ofa fall. Moreover, the interpretation of the two accounts as stories of a fall belongs to popular Jewish religious thought, rather than to the official teachers. According to Williams, the stories are the clothing for the previous”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
According to Williams, the fact that there were two different explanations of the fall in ancient Israel is a confirmation that neither story is the real source or basis of the doctrine ofa fall. Moreover, the interpretation of the two accounts as stories of a fall belongs to popular Jewish religious thought, rather than to the official teachers. According to Williams, the stories are the clothing for the previous”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“Christians today and for many centuries have assumed that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3 is the source of the belief in original sin. Adam”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“Academic theology, without spiritual practices, can all too easily lead to frustration with our theological constructions and even a loss of faith, because the practice of theology can then degenerate into a display of individual virtuosity rather than being an effort to grow in knowledge and love of God.”
― Philosophy for Understanding Theology, Second Edition
― Philosophy for Understanding Theology, Second Edition
“In addition, it is part of our God-given vocation to find as much of that order as we can and to praise God for the wonders of creation. Johann Kepler (1571-1630), one of the pioneering giants of classical science, and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) were the most influential proponents of the importance and value of science; both stressed this religious motive for doing
science. It is our divinely given vocation to render praise to God by achieving a sounder understanding of God's handiwork. They passionately believed and advocated this view.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
science. It is our divinely given vocation to render praise to God by achieving a sounder understanding of God's handiwork. They passionately believed and advocated this view.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“But faith, as we pointed out, is not primarily the acceptance of biblical beliefs because they have been revealed outside of and overriding human reason and good sense, and so in that sense are imposed on us without proper understanding.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“The human capacity for unhappiness is so enormous that the entire world cannot fill it.”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
“seeking to meet our needs for security and significance.
But God calls us back in many ways. We can become aware of the inability of finding any lasting satisfaction in the things of this world (the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness), and of the need and failure to make ourselves secure, and of our futile effort to establish our significance (the second and third temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness). The order of the world moves some of us to think about its source; and other things we have mentioned much earlier in the preface can move us to think of God, so that we are open to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. If we repent-turn around (the Greek word for "repentance" is metanoia, which means turning around in life and reorienting one's entire outlook”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
But God calls us back in many ways. We can become aware of the inability of finding any lasting satisfaction in the things of this world (the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness), and of the need and failure to make ourselves secure, and of our futile effort to establish our significance (the second and third temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness). The order of the world moves some of us to think about its source; and other things we have mentioned much earlier in the preface can move us to think of God, so that we are open to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. If we repent-turn around (the Greek word for "repentance" is metanoia, which means turning around in life and reorienting one's entire outlook”
― Theology for a Troubled Believer: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
