Continuing this week's series RE: Humanity and Sin, I wonder if the first sin (adam and eve) caused humanity to fall both from, and towards God.
In my last post, I wrote that in choosing to disobey God, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to the difference between good and evil. This created a break in the harmony in which they existed; which had been characterized by fellowship with God, community with each other, and living in accord with all other created things. Consequently, the first two of humanity introduced enmity that separates humankind from their Creator and from the rest of creation. Daniel Migliore defines this as evil, “which opposes the will of God and distorts the good creation.”
There could possibly be some spiritual-physiological aspect involved in the nature of human sin. Adam and Eve were created purely out of the power and creativity of God. Every human since then, has come about by an alternative experience. Without omitting God’s power in the process of reproduction, we all have been conceived and born out of the physiological substance of sinful humans. The first humans were derived only from God’s creativity and dust; since the fall, all others have come from cells. Though physiology may be only a theory, certainly, this break in community (sin) has culturally and spiritually been handed down since the fall. It has been taught by words and ideology, and by experiences, in such a way that we are essentially torn between the possibility of good and evil; and we continue to allow it to divide us. If God intended for us to exist in the unity of His image, the fall disfigured the human ability to live in such innocent harmony.
I supposed in the last post, that we are not punished by the actual event of Adam’s fall. Rather, his sin created the potential and inevitable future for us to imitate his sin; and we are punished for our participation in the break of God’s image. In this way, Adam’s fall represents all of humankind’s sin and guilt.
There could possibly be some spiritual-physiological aspect involved in the nature of human sin. Adam and Eve were created purely out of the power and creativity of God. Every human since then, has come about by an alternative experience. Without omitting God’s power in the process of reproduction, we all have been conceived and born out of the physiological substance of sinful humans. The first humans were derived only from God’s creativity and dust; since the fall, all others have come from cells. Though physiology may be only a theory, certainly, this break in community (sin) has culturally and spiritually been handed down since the fall. It has been taught by words and ideology, and by experiences, in such a way that we are essentially torn between the possibility of good and evil; and we continue to allow it to divide us. If God intended for us to exist in the unity of His image, the fall disfigured the human ability to live in such innocent harmony.
I supposed in the last post, that we are not punished by the actual event of Adam’s fall. Rather, his sin created the potential and inevitable future for us to imitate his sin; and we are punished for our participation in the break of God’s image. In this way, Adam’s fall represents all of humankind’s sin and guilt.
What is for sure is that “the ills we experience do not arise from divine carelessness or impotence, but from a free and sinful human act” (Aquinas). Stanley Grenz suggests the possibility that in their innocence Adam and Eve had not had the opportunity to choose good (and God) over evil, and so they “did not yet fully participate in the human destiny as designed by God.” In this manner of reason, their sin has a two-fold effect; in that they both opened the door to discord, and to the opportunity to choose live in the harmonic image of God.
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