Hello friends
So as I understand it for Paul sin and death are these 2 kinds of evil forces in the world generated by the error of Adam which all humans are born to and enslaved to until God frees them through believing in His son, Jesus Christ now son of God, previously the angel of the Lord before becoming human for a short while. Of course there’s potential quibbles over the details there but it seems he does think Jesus is now a kind of a god who shares rule over the universe, through his sacrifice the evil forces of sin and death have been vanquished.
My question is-by Paul saying nobody could have fulfilled the law of Moses previously, is he saying God basically made a mistake sending down a law nobody could fulfill and so basically realized okay My divine law doesn’t work, now ill adopt a child sacrifice to redeem humanity and relieve them from the shackles of sin and death
Because it seems to me he thinks sin and death are independent forces so strong God Himself had one failed attempt offering humanity freedom from that, only do basically need to try again since nobody could meet Him halfway with the first attempt. So out in with Moses, lawgiver and in with Christ, sacrificed son of God
Also, how is Paul so convinced God’s effort this time around is going to work if God according to Paul didn’t realize the law He sent down couldn’t really lead anyone to freedom from sin/death? Like okay 2nd effort from a first failure tikay as us south asians would say, but like how much confidence are you going to have in a God that needs a second try?
In the Bible, yes, but “Thou shalt not kill” does have the special status of being in the ten commandments. And that one, in various forms, predates the Bible. My question is how the idea of morality and sin gets extended from values that are clearly important to sustaining a society to mere dietary restrictions.
Robert said
Welcome, RM, to the Readers Forum. This is a question Christian theologians have struggled with for a couple of thousand years. The best solution, in my humble opinion, was offered by Irenaeus. The Fall was not as great of a catastrophe as some, eg, Augustine, would think. Humanity was a mere child at the time and thus did not fall that far. The Law of Moses was a pedagogue, as Paul said, and brought us knowledge of sin. As such it did not fail but fulfilled its purpose in a larger process envisioned from the beginning. Christ as the new Adam was always part of God’s intended vision for humanity. Thus Irenaeus seeks to unify creation and salvation as part of a single unified evolution of humanity. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a better one than what would be offered by Augustine. Not all of this can be attributed to Paul, of course, but part of it comes from Paul, who in the larger scheme of things did not see the Law as a bad thing that had failed. It was surely limited in its ability to save us but it was a good thing, a pedagogue, in part of a larger process.
Thank you for the answer! I am still curious about Barts answer but this is interesting.
If you allow me to give a mystical, Eastern take on the subject. I think to truly understand the “Law” and why it has no power to save, we first need to understand the “Fall”. This is clearly a profound myth – in the form of a parable with an underlying psychological intent. In the garden, Adam (= adamah = human = of the earth) is told to eat of the tree of life – not the tree of good and evil (consciousness of duality). I find it interesting in this story that earlier, “God” blows his Spirit into man. In other words, whose Spirit is in man? Was he not then one with God?…in the NT, the temple of the Holy Spirit? And yet, man’s temptation (the thought offered to him by the serpent) was that he needed more. He was unaware of his true identity. And so, he eats and becomes settled in the consciousness of duality…and separation (sin)…the human consciousness we all have after infancy. One cannot regain this consciousness through any admonition of the law. It’s powerless here. But the law can make us aware of our separation and maybe wake us up to the deception of thoughts masquerading as identity – what Paul said was its true intent. In the East, the sages say Man must awaken to his true identity – and through that consciousness – tap into the inner nourishing life that has always been there (not from his mind, but from being centered in and drawing life from his very being, expressed as “resting in the Spirit” in the book of Hebrews). This then completes the circle of the two Adams. The first strives out of ignorance to be like God, falls, and loses his humanity – and also loses what was in our humanity (connection to the Spirit). It is from this condition that man needs to be saved. The second Adam has God consciously becoming man (the incarnation). To keep struggling with the law betrays where our awareness is: in a state of separation. However, to become aware of this incarnation in us, to completely accept and live in the deepest being of our humanity, is salvation, or the oneness mentioned in John 17 – and throughout the writings of Paul.
My question is how the idea of morality and sin gets extended from values that are clearly important to sustaining a society to mere dietary restrictions.
The dietary restrictions have more to do with ritual impurity than moral evil. A menstruating woman has not committed a moral evil. She is simply ritually impure. A person burying their parents has committed no moral evil. Handling a dead body has simply made them ritually impure. Same thing with the admonition against eating shellfish. Shellfish are unclean because they lack fins or scales. Many of the rules in the OT have more to do with ritual impurity than moral evil.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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