Collective guilt

One objection to original sin is that it seems unfair to be blamed for something we didn't do. Sometimes that spills over into a parallel objection to vicarious atonement and penal substitution. I've discussed these objections from various angles over the years. But here's another consideration. 

Many cultures take collective guilt for granted. One people-group will continue to b lame another people-group for what that group or a particular representative of that group did in the past. For instance, when Ali lost the battle for succession after Muhammad died, that fomented a blood feud which continues right up to our own time. 

Likewise, the Greek Orthodox have never forgiven Roman Catholics for the Fourth Crusade. By the same token, it wouldn't surprise me if many Chinese and Koreans still hold a historical grudge against wars of aggression that Japan used to wage against her neighbors. I'm sure we could give example after example. 

Now my point is not that I think this in itself justifies the principle of collective guilt. I'd also add that collective guilt is not a general principle in scripture. The examples of Adam and Jesus are exceptional. 

My point, rather, is that whether or not collective guilt seems to be unfair is culturally-variable. In many cultures there's a powerful sense of solidarity between members of the same people-group which extends from the present into past generations, living and dead.  

And that raises the question of which is right. Is the sense of unfairness that some people feel a legitimate moral intuition or is it just the product of social conditioning in their particular culture? When two different cultures have competing sensibilities on this issue, what's the tiebreaker? 

This is why I'm inclined to be both a moral skeptic and a moral realism. That's a consistent position because moral skepticism concerns moral epistemology while moral realism concerns moral ontology. There are moral facts, but how well do we access them?

The question is the extent to which I should trust my moral intuitions. If I was born in a different culture, I might well have some radically different moral intuitions. This is one reason we need divine revelation: to reaffirm true moral intuitions and disaffirm false moral intuitions. 

The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil

1. I don't think word-studies provide the answer.

2. It's an interesting question who God's dialogue partner is in Gen 3:22. "Become like us". Perhaps it's the Spirit of God, who seems to be God's dialogue partner in Gen 1.

3. In my post I suggested that knowledge of good and evil refer to obedience or disobedience to God's command/prohibition:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/03/parsing-tree-of-knowledge.html

 Adam and Eve learn what evil is by simply doing what's forbidden. And it's a disappointing experience. There's no payoff. The only insight or enlightenment they gain is what it feels like to do what's forbidden. That's a very empty experience. They were hoping to get something out of it, but it's big letdown.

4. There has to be some kind of analogy between their experience and Gen 3:22. I'd say God already knows the consequences of obedience and disobedience, because he knows the future. He knows the aftermath of what Adam and Eve set in motion. 

5. A feature of human contentment or discontent is that we can be blissfully happy and contented so long as someone doesn't propose that there's something better we're missing out on. Simply planting that idea in the mind, that comparison with something hypothetically better, can foster discontent. The imagination does the rest. 

The mere suggestion that there's something better can foster the suspicion that we've been cheated. It isn't based on any actual tangible good they're aware of. It isn't based on any perceived good that's been withheld. Just the bare idea,

6. An example might be illicit teenage sex. The boy and girl are curious about what sex is like. They've been conditioned to believe there's nothing more enjoyable than sex, So they're in a big hurry to find out. They rush through it. As a result, they find sex is a big letdown. Natural goods can lose value if we approach them with false expectations. 

7. An example from classic literature would be Othello. Initially Othello and Desdemona are blissfully in love, but Iago seeks revenge. He knows that Desdemona is Otello's vulnerability. He plants in Othello's mind that Desdemona is having an affair with another man or simply in love with another man. Even though there's no evidence, the mere idea gnaws away at Othello. The groundless suspicion drives him insane jealousy.

The Tempter uses the tree of knowledge that way. Adam and Eve are happy until the Tempter suggests that God is holding back on them. They are getting second best. 

The mere idea is sufficient to make them dissatisfied with what they've got. They violate the prohibition to find out what they're missing. But all they discover is what it feels like to disobey. So now they have nothing to show for their transgression. They lost what they had without gaining anything in return, much less something better. 

Parsing the tree of knowledge

9 The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:9,17).

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths (Gen 3:1-7).

1. This is rather cryptic. Commentators puzzle over it due to lack of definition or explication. Unlike psychological novels, biblical narrators often refrain from telling the reader what characters are thinking, so the reader is like a bystander who sees and overhears the action. It remains on the surface.

2. What is meant by the knowledge of good and evil? What was lacking in the experience of Adam and Eve prior to eating from the tree? In what sense were their eyes opened? Did the Tempter lie to them?

3. Some commentators focus on word-studies, but you can't get much milage out of that to answer these questions. Some commentators speculate that Adam and Eve were morally immature, in a state of diminished responsibility.

4. It's possible that the tree of knowledge doesn't confer the knowledge of good and evil. Rather, they discover or experience what evil means by doing what's forbidden. It's not so much about the nature of the tree, but the nature of their defiant action. When they violate the prohibition, they discover or experience the nature of evil through their wrongdoing. 

They are now in a different mental and moral state than before they transgressed the prohibition. They can't turn back the clock to their prior inexperience. 

5. So their eyes are opened, not in the sense that the tree in itself confers knowledge of good and evil, but because they now know what it feels like to do something forbidden. That's a change. The contrast between respecting the prohibition and defying the prohibition. 

6. In addition, they find out what it's like to be deceived. In a sense, the Tempter didn't lie to them, but he tricked them. He told a half-truth. What happened was a letdown. Not what they were expecting or hoping for. In a sense he held up his end of the bargain, but they were too naive to appreciate what they are in for. They gain insight through hindsight rather than foresight, at which point it's too late to recross the line. 

7. In itself, their action changes next to nothing. They now know what it feels like to do something forbidden. That's all. But that's disappointing. That's very thin. Like running a red light at a deserted intersection.

8. However, violating the prohibition is punishable. So their action fosters a sense of dread. Knowledge of good and evil instills foreboding about what awaits them. And, indeed, retribution is swift, as they are banished from the garden. Shut off from access to the tree of life. From hereon out they must struggle with inhospitable conditions, aging, and death. 

The Wonderful Visit

1. Temptation and the Fall are recurrent themes in the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Demonic temptation is a pervasive theme in The Screwtape Letters. Satanic Temptation and a Fall averted is a pervasive theme of Perelandra. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe narrates the temptation, downfall, and redemption of Edmund. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader narrates the temptation, downfall, and redemption of Eustace. In The Magicians Nephew, Lewis synchronizes creation with The fall when Jadis invades Narnia at the moment of creation. The same novel narrates the temptation of Digory in an Edenic/Hesperidian garden, only he successfully resists the temptation. For whatever reason, Lewis seems to be fascinated with these themes. 

2. There's a related, potential theme in Out of the Silent Planet, only Lewis doesn't develop it in that direction. Mars underwent Satanic attack which left it physically damaged, but the three intelligent species remain unfallen. Ransom, a fallen agent, is interjected into that world. That generates contact between unfallen agents and a fallen agent. Yet Ransom, though fallen agent, is benign. He's not a malevolent agent like Jadis, or the Un-man in Perelandra. 

Even so, this raises an interesting idea, although it's not developed in the novel. Although Ransom has no malicious intentions, yet because he is fallen, he can inadvertently seed the unfallen species with evil notions. He's not wicked, but he's like a soldier fresh from the war zone, where you have to watch your back all the time. The kind of precautions and suspicions necessary to survive in a fallen world are foreign to the agents of an unfallen world. Simply by talking about his own experience, by comparing and contrasting his world with the their world, he can unwittingly plant sinister ideas in their imagination that never occurred to them. Like a species with no resistance, much less immunity, to exotic diseases, a well-meaning fallen agent might infect unfallen agents. His presence could prove contagious even though he's not a tempter. That's assuming the aliens, while sinless, are not impeccable.  

3. However, we can also develop the same idea in reverse: the effect of interjecting an unfallen agent into a fallen world. What would be the reaction? John Ruskin once remarked that if an angel was spotted in England, he'd be shot on sight. That prompted H. G. Wells to write The Wonderful Visit. Since Wells was an atheist, and the novel is social satire, the protagonist is not a conventional angel by orthodox standards. Rather, he represents a truly innocent, guileless being. He has no understanding of humans and they have no understanding of him. He provokes hostility by compassionate but clueless actions like freeing farm animals. Eventually, he returns to wherever he came from because his presence is intolerable. 

Although that's fictional, it has realistic analogies. Take the persecution of Christians. The virtuous are hated in a world where the normal is vice. The supreme example is the homicidal hostility to Jesus. Darkness fears and despises the light. 

Did Jesus die for little green men?

Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

https://gizmodo.com/which-religion-is-friendliest-to-the-idea-of-aliens-1841241730

i) Unless and until we discover aliens, or they discover us, this is purely academic. Even if this might be a defeater for Christianity, it's a hypothetical defeater, not a demonstrable defeater. 

ii) Calvinists, who subscribe to limited atonement, reject an assumption of his argument.

iii) According to Scripture, many angels are fallen, but no provision was made for their redemption.

iv) There's no reason to think the fall of Adam would implicate inhumane species in original sin. Aliens are not Adam's posterity. Adam is not their federal head.

v) Assuming that aliens exist, there's no presumption that they are fallen. Hence, there's no presumption that aliens require an atonement even if they do exist.

vi) The doctrine of original sin isn't based on evolution. Indeed, theistic evolution typically denies a historic fall.

vii) There's no presumption that if aliens exist, they are the product of evolution rather than special creation. 

viii) The Incarnation is unique in reference to the Son becoming human. In principle, the Incarnation is repeatable in reference to the Son assuming the nature of other intelligent creatures. The uniqueness of the Incarnation doesn't preclude multiple incarnations in that respect because each incarnation would be a unique, unrepeatable union  between the Son and the nature of an intelligent species. 

ix) It's not contrary to personal identity for the Son to form a hypostatic union with more than one species. It would be the same timeless, spaceless Son at one end of the relation. Although there'd be more than one individual creature at the other end of the relation, that would just mean the Son qua Incarnate is not uniquely identical to any particular instance of incarnation, but identical to the ensemble. 

To take a comparison: suppose God created a multiverse. In that event, God is the Creator of each separate universe as well as the multiverse. His identity as Creator operates at more than one level. The Creator of the set as well as the subsets. 

x) In the nature of the case, Bible history zeros in on earth history and human history. It's silent on the question of alien life. It's silent on the question of a multiverse. It doesn't speak to those hypotheticals one way or the other. It doesn't address the world history of aliens on other planets, assuming they exist. For the record, I have no opinion about the existence of aliens in our universe.  

Did Jesus die for Klingons?

Christian Weidemann argues:

Every major religion on Earth could easily accommodate the discovery of (intelligent) alien life, with one exception: Christianity.

...Now imagine the universe is teeming with other intelligent civilizations. What is a Christian believer supposed to say? Claiming that Christ died only for us, while the rest of the universe is screwed, would be incompatible with God’s love. If, however, earthly Jesus died for the whole universe, myriads of extraterrestrial sinners included, we would have to accept a geocentrism even more preposterous than the spatial variant. Neither is there a way out by suggesting that other intelligent species may not have been “fallen.” This proposal amounts to a negative human exceptionalism that is totally unbelievable, given that alien species are subject to the same general evolutionary mechanisms as we are. Natural selection favours “selfish” traits.

What about multiple incarnations? Here another difficulty of traditional Christian doctrine comes into play: Christ has two natures—he is “truly God and truly man.” But how are members of completely different biological species (“truly man” and “truly Klingon,” let’s say) supposed to stand in a relationship of personal identity? Even worse, if the number of sinful species in the universe exceeds a certain threshold, God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously. However, no single person who is an embodied being with a finite nature, i.e. a “truly” biological organism, can be more than one such being at the same time. If, on the other hand, the incarnations were not personally identical, many different persons with a divine nature would result—too many even for a Christian. Finally: May extraterrestrial sinners have been reconciled to God by means different from a divine incarnation? Perhaps, but even if the Christian believer concedes alternative means of salvation she is stuck with the highly implausible geocentric claim that the incarnation, i.e. one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos, happens just 2000 years ago on our planet, although myriads of other inhabited planets were also available.

Therefore, I conclude, the traditional Christian believer can’t make theological sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

(Source)

1. And this is from a lecturer in Protestant theology! With "friends" like these...

2. Why isn't it possible for Christ to have died "only" for humans? Suppose intelligent aliens exist, but suppose they likewise rebelled against God. So they're fallen too. In that case, why should God's "love" extend to rebels? What about God's justice? Is it "incompatible with God's love" if God doesn't rescue Satan and the fallen angels?

3. Is it "preposterous" if an "earthly Jesus" died for other extraterrestrials? What if other extraterrestrials in the universe are also human?

4. Weidemann assumes evolutionary mechanisms shape our morality, but that's highly contentious. He'd have to mount a case for this for a start.

Besides, just because an act is "selfish" doesn't necessarily mean it's sinful. It's selfish for me to walk on the beach alone when I could be having a conversation with a friend, but it's not necessarily sinful for me to do so.

In theory it's possible aliens could have evolutionarily "selfish traits". Such as caring more about themselves than other aliens. But that's not necessarily sinful. Just like it's possible humans might care more about other humans than other animals, but still care for other animals.

5. The multiple incarnations dilemma is an interesting one. Granted, I'm no philosopher or theologian, but I'll try to take a stab at this:

a. For one thing, why assume "God would be forced to incarnate himself simultaneously"? Why couldn't God incarnate himself sequentially?

b. What's more, even if the Son of God incarnated himself simultaneously, I don't see how this would be problematic if, as most traditional Christians believe, God is outside spacetime. Why couldn't a timeless God have multiple instances of himself at multiple points in the spacetime continuum? Take the fiction of C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote about Aslan in Narnia as well as Maleldil in Perelandra. We know Lewis meant both to be the Son of God. I envision Narnia and Perelandra sort of (not quite) paralleling other worlds. (Indeed, consider whether God the Son could have become incarnate in parallel universes rather than other worlds within the same universe.)

c. I assume some form of Cartesian dualism is true. If so, then it's possible for humans to become disembodied. Our souls can be decoupled from our bodies (at death). We live on despite the death of our physical bodies. Meanwhile our corpses rot away; they become dust and ashes. At the same time, God promises his people new bodies in the world to come. As such, it's possible for our souls to inhabit more than one body. (As an aside, this likewise calls to mind scifi shows like Altered Carbon where people have their minds uploaded to a cloud, then downloaded to various bodies.)

Why couldn't something like this be true of the Son of God too? However an objection might be humans cannot possess more than one body at the same time. Perhaps a response could be that that's not necessarily the case for the Son of God. For one thing, he is omnipresent, unlike humans.

d. As far as the issue of identity, was the Son of God's pre-resurrection body identical to his post-resurrection body, given his pre-resurrection body died and deteriorated?

e. Weidemann floats the rejoinder that the salvation of extraterrestrials could have occurred with "alternative means of salvation" absent the incarnation (I agree). However, he immediately dismisses it because it means the Christian is "geocentric". However I don't see what's necessarily wrong with "geocentrism"? Why is it necessarily morally problematic for God to have saved Earthlings by having the incarnation (and crucifixion and resurrection)?

If anything, wouldn't the incarnation imply how far the moral rot in humans has spread that God the Son had to become flesh like us to save us rather than implying anything virtuous about humans? There's no room for pride in the criminal who had to have another pay for his crimes because he had no other options for restitution left to him.

Vampirism, original sin, and redemption

There's an interesting parallel between vampirism, original sin, and redemption. In vampire lore, vampires have a genealogical identity. They turn humans into vampires by biting them. Vampirism spreads from one vampire to the next. So there are family trees of vampires. 

In addition, a vampire killer doesn't have to destroy every vampire individually. If he can track down the master vampire and destroy him, all his descendants instantly revert to human. So he doesn't have to destroy any of the descendants. He can save them from the curse of vampirism at one stroke by destroying the master vampire.  

Of course, vampires are fictional characters, and they make no scientific sense. At best, they only make sense as creatures of the occult. But the parallels between vampirism and Christian theology are striking. 

The transmission of original sin

1. Original sin has two sides: (i) the condemnation of Adam's sin and (ii) moral corruption/spiritual inability. (i) seems unfair. I've discussed that on multiple occasions. In this post I'd like to focus in (ii).

2. One question is whether the Bible teaches original sin. Considered in isolation, Gen 3 doesn't seem to teach original sin. However, that's followed by a drastic escalation in evil, leading up to the flood. And it continues after the flood. OT history is a record of pervasive depravity, both in pagan cultures as well as Israel. The extent and intensity of human evil is hard to explain unless there's a predisposition to evil.

In the NT, two classic passages are Rom 5:12-21 & 1 Cor 15:21-22. The text in 1 Cor 15 is about death, while the text in Rom 5 is about condemnation as well as death. 

Over and above that are Pauline texts about the moral and spiritual blindness, hardness, and deadness of the lost. About their captivity to raw destructive passions. Again, it's hard to explain that if humans are born moral blank slates. 

Finally, a theme of John's Gospel and 1 John is how the mission of Christ exposes the preexisting animus towards God and good. That dovetails with the Pauline picture.

3. A difficult issue in Christian theology is the transmission of original sin. In terms of guilt and condemnation for Adam's sin, that gave rise to debates over immediate and immediate imputation in Reformed theology. I think proponents of immediate imputation have the better of the argument. Again, that raises questions of fairness, but I've addressed that elsewhere.

4. But what about the transmission of moral corruption? What's the metaphysics or mechanics of original sin in that respect? That's something else theologians struggle with. Different models are proposed. 

Let's take a comparison: from what I've read, feral children are psychological inhuman. For normal psychological maturation to occur, humans require socialization during their formative years. There's a narrow window of opportunity that closes. If humans don't receive the necessary socialization during that period, no amount of remedial socialization will fix the deficit. The tragedy of feral children is the fact that they already passed the threshold where it's possible for them to develop a normal psychological makeup. No matter how much affection and attention they receive, it's too late for them to become psychologically human. It would take a miracle (which God may provide in the afterlife.)

Nothing was done to them that directly caused that deficient. They weren't physically, verbally, and psychologically abused. Rather, their condition is the result of severe neglect.  Humans aren't like Jem'Hadar babies programed to automatically mature psychologically as soon as they pop out of the incubation chambers. Our psychological makeup isn't purely internal and self-contained, waiting to unfold like clockwork. To be psychologically complete and mature requires something from the outside.  

By analogy, the transmission of original sin needn't be caused by some positive factor or determinant, but by the absence of some external factor that's necessary to complete our moral formation. Something lost in the Fall. 

Hiding in the bushes

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen 3:8-11).

This has always been a puzzling passage. It's understandable why they tried to hide from God. Although that's comical, they knew less about God than we do. So they might believe they could successfully elude divine detection. 

Even so, why did they hide because they were naked? What does nudity have to do with it?

Is it because they were embarrassed to be seen in the buff by God after they ate the forbidden fruit? But once again, what's the logical connection? Perhaps their reaction is inexplicable. When caught redhanded, wrongdoers may react in irrational ways. 

It won't do to say the account is fictional, for even fictional stories are supposed to make sense on their own terms. It had to be meaningful to the narrator. Indeed, good fiction has to be more logical than real life because it lacks factuality to lend it plausibility. 

God's question implies that Adam wasn't conscious or self-conscious of his nudity until he ate the forbidden fruit. At one level, that's reasonable. Having been made that way, Adam had no point of contrast. No occasion to give his nudity a second thought. That was his exclusive experience. 

Perhaps they took shelter in the bushes to provide a barrier against physical harm. Nudity is a vulnerable state which leaves one more exposed to physical harm. There's nothing between you and the elements–or weapons. They were unarmored and unarmed. 

If, as Jeffrey Niehaus has argued, the divine visitation is a storm theophany, perhaps they took refuge in the bushes to provide a measure of protection against the approaching storm.  Assuming it was a storm theophany, we don't know what form it took. A thunderstorm? A whirlwind? 

Perhaps a fire theophany? The Angel of the Lord may assume a luminous appearance or even, according to Exodus, the appearance of a fire whirl. If they saw something like that touch down and head in their direction, it's not surprising that they ran for cover.                            

Is original sin unjust

One objection to Calvinism is that original sin is unjust. It is unjust to punish the innocent. To punish someone for something they didn't do.

That's hardly unique to Calvinism. That's standard Latin theology. Traditional Catholic theology. Classical Arminianism. The historic rationale for infant baptism is to remove the stain of original sin. (Not my own position.)

I'd add that in Genesis, the primary punishment was losing access to the tree of life. But it's not as if that's something Adam's posterity was entitled to. 

But let's discuss the objection head-on. All things being equal, it's a miscarriage of justice to punish someone for something they didn't do. But are there exceptions?

Suppose I'm a juror. The defendant is a professional hitman. He's been indicted on a charge of capital murder. The prosecution makes a convincing case, so the jury, myself included, convict him, and he's executed.

But after his execution, an investigative reporter does a story showing that he was innocent. The cops planted incriminating evidence. 

Do I feel guilty? No. There's no doubt that he murdered many people. While it's ironic that he was falsely accused and punished, that makes up for all the times he got away with it. Indeed, it's less that he deserves. 

In what sense was he innocent? He was innocent of this particular crime, but he was guilty of this kind of crime. So even though he was punished for what someone else did, he was guilty of doing the same kind of thing on multiple occasions. This conviction takes the place of all the other times he eluded justice.  So there's a kind of moral transference. 

To approach it from a different angle: after they lost the war, the top Nazis committed suicide. I don't know the specific motivation. Perhaps they were terrified of what would happen if the Russians got hold of them.

But suppose they didn't commit suicide. Suppose they were put on trial. Is it necessary to convict them of murdering any particular Jew? If it's demonstrable that they were generally guilty of murdering Jews, is it morally necessary to prove that they murdered a particular Jew? 

I'm not saying these illustrations automatically vindicate the justice of original sin. But I'm provided counterexamples to show that there's nothing wrong in principle with punishing someone for what someone else did. 

What is man?

I recently read What is Man? (Elm Hill, 2018) by Edgar Andrews. It's a witty, erudite, wide-ranging monograph that defends biblical anthropology in light of modern scientific challenges. The book has a scientific emphasis, but that's integrated into a broader philosophical and theological context. 

PART 1. MAN AND THE COSMOS

Ch.1. Who Do You Think You Are? 13

(What is Man? A summary)

Ch.2. The Cheshire Cat Cosmos 33

(Can a universe create itself from nothing?)

Ch.3. Small Flat Bugs 51

(Where is Man?)

Ch.4. The Cosmic Cookbook 75

(A fine-tuned universe)

Ch.5. Deutsch’s Dauntless Dinosaurs 103

(Exploring the mega-multiverse)

PART 2. MAN AND THE BIOSPHERE

Ch.6. Death And Taxes 125

(Human uniqueness)

Ch.7. The Devil In The Details 145

(Digging deeper into genes and genomes)

Ch.8. Dem Dry Bones 169

(What fossils really tell us about the rise of Man)

Ch. 9. Aristotle And The Snowball 193

(On human consciousness)

PART 3. MAN AND THE BIBLE

Ch.10. Worldviews At War 217

(On the nature of reality)

Ch.11. Adam And The Apple 239

(The historicity and fall of Adam and Eve)

Ch.12. The Image Of God 263

(Why Man is unique)

Ch.13. The Second Adam 287

(Jesus Christ, the perfect man)

Ch.14. The Resurrection: Fact Or Fiction? 307

(The claim, the evidence, and the implications)

The metaphysics of original sin

I'm going to revisit the issue of whether original sin is fair. It's a topic I've discussed from various angles. For instance. 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/04/vicarious-responsibility.html

1. In the Genesis narrative (Gen 2-3), as I construe it, humans are naturally mortal but with a potential for immortality, contingent on access to the tree of life. When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, they lose their shot at immortality. And that's a lost opportunity for their posterity as well. To be born outside the Garden is to be consigned to morality, as the default state of humans, absent the tree of life. 

For Adam and Eve, the lost opportunity of immortality is punitive. But is it punitive for their posterity, or is that merely a side-effect of what their ancestors did?

To take a comparison, suppose a businessman becomes rich through hard work, but squanders his fortune through compulsive gambling. As a result, his kids inherit nothing. But they aren't being punished for their father's gambling debts.

Now, a common objection is that it's unfair for humans to suffer the dire consequences of what was done by a second party (Adam and Eve), without their consent. But whether that's unfair depends on whether humans are entitled to immortality. 

To revert to my comparison, it's not a miscarriage of justice if the kids of the impoverished rich man inherit nothing. They didn't earn the money. It wasn't theirs to lose.

The question is whether the imputation of Adam's guilt is directly punitive, or more in the nature of a hereditary liability, for something humans never had a claim on in the first place.

Likewise, the question of whether original sin is damnatory, or whether that's reserved for actual sin.

2. Is it fair to be born with a sin nature? Not only do kids inherit physical traits from their parents, they inherit psychological traits from their parents. And I think that's evidence for traducianism. I'm a Cartesian dualist traducian.

If alcoholism runs in your family, you may have a chemical or genetic predisposition to alcoholism. That's unfair, but you wouldn't even exist if the deck was reshuffled. 

Likewise, you might inherit a bad psychological trait. Suppose your dad has a short temper, which you inherit. You might say that's unfair, but you wouldn't even exist without the father you had. That's part of your psychological makeup, and your origination depends on it. Some psychological traits can be modified or eradicated, but that's after the fact. They can't be eradicated in advance without eliminating you! 

The Magician's Nephew

How could evil originate in a good world? Or did it? In The Magician's Nephew, Lewis solves that theological conundrum by making the source of evil a malevolent invader from another world. Lewis has a comparable device in Perelandra. 

I remember a Bible scholar who said the Tempter in Gen 3 performs the same function. Since Eden was initially devoid of evil, it had to enter the garden. The source of evil lay outside the garden rather than the inside the garden.

Although that may finesse the proximate source of evil, it only pushes the question back a step. It can't explain the ultimate source of evil. How did the malevolent invader become evil in the first place? How did evil originate wherever he came from? 

The issue is sometimes framed in terms of how a holy or perfect agent could ever find evil appealing in the first place. 

It's like asking how a movie villain became a villain. At one level, there may be an explanation inside the plot or narrative. There may be a backstory about some pivotal event that took him in the wrong direction. 

At another level, outside the story, he's a villain because the director had the idea of a villainous character, and he turned his idea into a movie. It began in his mind. The villain was originally a thought. The villain in the story objectifies the director's imagination. At that level, he does dastardly things in the movie because he does dastardly things in the director's imagination, and the movie character is a projection of the director's imagination. 

There's the additional fact that while Adam was initially sinless, that doesn't mean there was no room for improvement. A quest for knowledge isn't inherently wrong. Intellectual curiosity is a good thing. 

In this case, it's forbidden knowledge, but that combines something innocuous with something prohibited. There can be wrong ways to acquire something good.

Moreover, certain kinds of knowledge are corrupting. Getting inside the mind of a serial killer is corrupting. Likewise, learning about evil by doing evil is corrupting. Then there's second-order evils where an agent must commit one kind of evil to be in a position to experience another kind of evil. Some kinds of knowledge are safe for God but dangerous for creatures.  

Adam and the Genome review

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/03/adam-and-the-genome-review-and-conclusion/

Hilbert's Hotel

Supralapsarian Calvinism is sometimes classified as a felix culpa theology. Conversely, you have atheists who say, Why did God create Satan, knowing what would happen? 

Suppose Adam and Eve never fell. What would the world be like? Would it be better, worse, or both better and worse?

Minimally, Adam's posterity wouldn't die of old age. Perhaps, if Adam and Eve ate from the tree of life, their immortality would be transmitted to their posterity. Or perhaps their posterity would need to eat from the tree of life. Or perhaps, as they colonized the earth, they'd take seeds from the tree of life and plant it elsewhere. 

Or maybe God would simply confer immortality on Adam's posterity, apart from the tree of life. It's unlikely that fruit from the tree of life had chemical properties that conveyed biological immortality. How is that naturally possible? Rather, it's more likely that God simply attached a blessing to that object. 

In theory, Adam's posterity might still be vulnerable to death by causes other than senescence. Perhaps God might providentially protect them from death by other causes. Or perhaps God would let them die, but miraculously restore them to life.

It seems unlikely that an intermediate state would exist in an unfallen world. In a fallen world, the intermediate state exists because people die at different times over the millennia, but at the Parousia, death will cease, and all the dead will restored to life all at once. (According to amil eschatology. Premil eschatology is more complex, but the net effect will be the same.)

But in an unfallen world, there wouldn't be that cutoff. So there wouldn't be any point in people dying, then passing into an intermediate state. 

The upshot is that in an unfallen world, the human race would continue to reproduce until it reached an optimum population level. In theory, that might be confined to the garden of Eden. If so, that would be a small population.

Or perhaps Adam's posterity would outgrow the garden and proceed to colonize the more hospitable regions of the globe. But to avoid the detrimental effects of overpopulation (e.g. famine, starvation), it would have to plateau. Suppose at that point God made the women infertile. 

Reproduction would terminate with a stable, unchanging population. However many generations of Adam's posterity until it hit the optimum population threshold. That would be the last generation. Frozen in place. Further procreation would be unnecessary to maintain a replacement rate, since no one would die–or if they died, they'd be restored to life. 

That would be a good world. Better in some respects than a fallen world. However, the overall population would be far smaller. An absolutely static, invariant population.

One fringe benefit of mortality is that it frees up time and space for far more humans to exist. Some of them are hellbound but some of them are heavenbound. Yet the heavenbound humans wouldn't exist in a world where there's a final generation once reproduction reaches the optimum population size. There's no more room for additional generations. The cutoff comes early in human history.

In one respect, a fallen world is worse because it contains hellbound individuals. But that's offset by the greater number of heavenbound individuals, since they don't have to coexist at the same time and place. Because they exist diachronically rather than synchronically in the same place, procreation can continue indefinitely. 

God might still decree a terminus, but it will be very far out compared to an unfallen world. The cumulative population will be vastly larger. Eventually, they all exist simultaneously, but not at the same location. 

Heaven is more capacious than Hilbert's Hotel. Never runs out of guest rooms. Always a vacancy! 

Choose life!

but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die (Gen 2:17).

An old crux. If the penalty denotes physical death, then it seems like the warning was an empty threat inasmuch as God didn't strike them dead. Of course, the narrator would have to be pretty inept to relay such a blatant contradiction. 

One explanation is that "in the day" is a idiom for "when", and therefore says less about sequential timing than sequential consequences. In the past, I've discussed that explanation. But now I'd like to consider an alternative explanation. A neglected interpretation.

What is meant by "life" and "death" in Gen 2-3? When we interpret Genesis, it's often useful to employ the Pentateuch generally as a frame of reference. That's partly because the Pentateuch is a literary unit, and partly because, by design, Genesis foreshadows later developments. There are common motifs in Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch.

Where else do we have a life and death contrast in the Pentateuch? A conspicuous example is Deut 30:

15 See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your Godthat I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live (Deut 30:15-19).

Even in this summary statement, it's about the quality of life. Life in the promised pand–in contrast to exile. The meaning of "life" and "death" in that context is detailed by the covenantal blessing and bane in Deut 28. "Life" is characterized by:

The Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 9 The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of theLord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow (Deut 28:1-12).

That explicates "life" in terms of spiritual and material prosperity. By contrast, "death" is characterized by famine, cannibalism, illness, oppression, bondage, invasion, exile, idolatry, insecurity, terror (28:15-68). That explicates "death" in terms of spiritual and material bane. 

On the one hand, the promised land is like a second Eden:

the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord (Gen 13:10).

7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey (Deut 8:7-8).

A well-watered land, irrigated by rivers. A land lush with fruit trees. Sound familiar? (cf. Gen 2:9-10.)

On the other hand, the woes in Gen 3:14-19 anticipate the snake-infested wilderness (Num 21:6), as well as the accursed womb and the accursed ground in the Deuteronomic imprecations (Deut 28).

The Assyrian deportation and Babylonian exile parallel the banishment from Eden. To be cut off from the sanctuary and the land of blessing. Adam and Eve "died" when they were expelled from Eden.   

Change in the air

Depending on where you live, you can sense a change in the air as we pass from summer to autumn. You don't have to look at a calendar. You can feel it. And the shift may be fairly sudden. 

When Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, there were some obvious consequences. They left behind the tree of life, thereby forfeiting their shot at physical immortality. Likewise, they moved to a far less hospitable environment. Perhaps an arid environment, away from the riverine setting of Eden. 

But to be exiled from Eden had more subtle connotations. I assume that many people associate gardens with spring and summer. For vegetable gardens, that's the growing season. For flower gardens, that's when most flowers bloom. And that's true in the wild, even if it's not technically an orchard or garden. So gardens have a seasonal connotation. And that also carries with it warmer, sunnier weather, when the world thaws out. 

By contrast, we associate winter with denuded trees. Fruitless trees. Chilly or frigid weather. In winter the world contracts. Of course, that's subject to geographical variations.

Some people prefer living in a part of the world with four distinct seasons. Some people like snowy weather. They like to ski.

People generally like autumn, when leaves turn red, yellow, and orange. And sometimes autumn can be a relief after a sweltering summer. Again, depends on where you live. But, of course, autumn is the prelude to winter.

In many parts of the world, the amenities of modern technology make winter much easier to take than in the past. Winter used to be a more dangerous season. Harder to survive in winter. Some American settlers froze to death or starved to death because they were not equipped for winter. They didn't know what they were moving into. Their experience was ill-adapted to their new environs. 

We don't know how long Adam and Eve resided in Eden before their expulsion. Even if they lived there for at least a year, the river might mitigate the effects of winter. And it was a naturally warm climate. 

Consider the first time they experienced autumn outside the garden. To them, it may have been deceptively enjoyable, with all the colors. And perhaps the cooler autumnal weather was pleasant. 

But unlike us, they didn't know that autumn is a harbinger of winter, or what lay in store. In many cultures, winter symbolizes death. And that symbolism trades on the fact that winter is a deadlier season. If you do not or cannot make adequate preparations for winter, you are likely to die of starvation or exposure. In addition, major predators are more desperate in the wintertime, which makes them even more dangerous to humans.

In a hot dry climate, the fall might seem to be a temporary improvement, but even though things appear to be getting better, they are really getting worse. And some people don't get a chance to learn from their mistakes.

The effects of their expulsion from Eden were not instantaneous. Rather, there were delayed effects. They discovered one ordeal after another. 

What is sin?

How do we account for the human propensity for evil? How is that propensity transmitted from one generation to the next?Liberal scholars and Jewish scholars typically say the Christian doctrine of original sin is based on the NT (Rom 5/1 Cor 15)  rather than the OT (Gen 3). 

Let's begin with a traditional exposition:

[Original] pollution is not  to be regarded as a substance infused into the human soul, nor a change of substance in the metaphysical sense of the word…Original sin is also an inherent positive disposition toward sin…[The unregenerate] cannot change his fundamental preference for sin and self to love for God… L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 1984),246-46.

There is, of course, more to the traditional doctrine of original sin, but this is what I wish to focus on. Here's one possible way of viewing the human propensity for evil, and its transmission from generation to generation. Suppose humans naturally have a capacity for evil, and the effect of the Fall isn't to add or change something intrinsic to human nature, but to remove something extrinsic to human nature. To a great extent, sin is due to lack of moral inhibition. Suppose moral inhibition is initially due to divine restraint. If God withdraws the inhibitory constraints, then natural appetites take over. Competition for what we desire. Resentment for rivals. Rage when our desires are frustrated. 

In addition, the absence of moral restraint makes evil increasingly compulsive. The more they give into sin, the greater the appetite. The more hardened they become. 

We see the progression of sin up to the Flood. Likewise, in Rom 1, Paul takes about God giving people over to sin. That suggests the removal of divine restraint. 

Perhaps this is what is meant by the enigmatic "knowledge of good and evil" in Gen 2-3, which commentators puzzle over. It's possible to have an abstract knowledge of right and wrong. That, however, is different from having a sense of shame, obligation, or indignation. 

In that sense, a conscience can be acquired. Moral knowledge becomes internalized and increasingly engrained. Not nature, but second nature.

It requires external restraint for that to develop. If external restraint is withdrawn before the process develops, then a moral free fall ensues, because there's nothing to counteract natural appetites. Abstract moral knowledge is too weak. Moral formation is short-circuited.  

The anonymous Tempter

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

This may be a case of dramatic irony, where the audience senses something about a situation or a character (the Tempter) that another character (Eve) does not. The name of the Tempter instantly tipped off the audience that there may be something sinister about this character. "Snaky" characters have a reputation that precedes them. The connotations of the Hebrew designation are ominous. 

The question is whether Eve knew the name of the Tempter. To begin with, she wasn't around when Adam named the animals. Moreover, as some commentators note (e.g. Mathews, Sailhamer), the syntax is ambiguous as to whether the Tempter even is one of the garden animals. It could be rendered that he was "subtle as none other of the beasts"–which would place him in a class apart.

Eve never addresses the Tempter by name. It's the narrator who uses that designation. So the dialogue between Eve and the Tempter resembles a movie in which viewers watch a character strap on a shaheed belt, concealed under his jacket, leave his apartment, then board a crowded subway train. It could go off at any time. Passengers are oblivious to their imminent peril. 

By the same token, the narrator clues the audience into an alarming piece of information that Eve may lack. But while the audience is on the alert, Eve suspects nothing. 

Death threats in Eden

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:16-17).

This raises various issues, which I've discussed before. For instance, "in the day" is a Hebrew idiom for "when". So it doesn't mean you'd die on the same day you eat it.

Take a statement like, "When you have kids of your own, you'll understand!" That doesn't mean the instant they have a child, they'll understand. Rather, it refers to insight that results from the process of childrearing. It can take years for that to sink in. 

But here's another issue I haven't discussed: If Adam and Eve had no experience of death, how could they grasp the threat, much less appreciate the gravity of the threat?

Admittedly, there's a distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Even so, what would death connote to them, what would be the force of that threat, if that was just an abstract idea?

Was there death in the Garden? I don't think human death antedated the Fall. And I don't believe in pre-Adamites. But what about animal death? Could there be animal death in the Garden? If so, what kind?

Of course, young-earth creationists deny that possibility. There are roughly three components to YEC:

i) Mature creation

ii) Global flood

iii) No antelapsarian mortality

These are logically separable propositions. You can affirm all three, deny all three, affirm one or two. Let's assume for the sake of argument that animal death preexisted the fall. And if you don't want to assume it, that's fine. That just means this post is not for you.

In principle, the Garden of Eden could contain small predators. Adam and Eve could observe predators killing prey animals. Even if they were wild predators, they wouldn't attack creatures the size of Adam and Eve.

I have in mind small predators like the fox, bobcat, Ocelot, Caracal, weasel, and otter. I'm not suggesting these exact species existed at that time and place. Just using them to illustrate the general idea (small predators). 

Likewise, there could be predatory birds that would swoop down to snatch snakes, rodents, or whatever. Likewise, nonvenomous snakes could kill and eat rodents. 

In theory, you could even have major predators so long as they were tame. As such, they wouldn't be dangerous to Adam and Eve. 

A lot depends on the size of Garden, and other details. We tend to think of Eden as a tropical paradise, but it may have been located in a hot, dry region. What made Eden lush was the river. 

There's also the question of whether Adam and Eve raised livestock for meat. Although some readers take Gen 9 to mean man only acquired a carnivorous diet after the Fall, the terminology arguably has reference to hunting wild animals–in distinction to livestock. In any case, that's not essential to my argument. 

Theoretically, even if there was no death in the Garden, it might be possible to observe predation outside the Garden the elevation of the Garden in relation to the surrounding countryside, natural barriers, and so forth.

For that matter, God could give Adam and Eve dreams of death. Examples of human or animal death in dreams. 

The last two examples are more speculative, but they show the range of possible explanations.