Stichting Baas in Eigen Huis eiste namens 1650 makelaars voor de rechtbank van Alkmaar dat Jaap.nl stopt met de volledige presentatie van de te koop staande woningen…

Een leven zonder schulden en schuldeisers…

He’s talking about the progression in the Old Testament from a fertility based religion to one based on ethics

Huh:?: Fertility based? Does that come from the admonition to be fruitful and mulitply? I would hardly call that a fertility based religion.

It is unfortunate that the trade off for the development of an ethics-based religion, at least in the West, was that God had to be all good.

Would anyone really want a God who is not good?

As you said, the author tips his hand when speaking of this all as a myth. This is creating gods in one’s own image — which is a waste of time. If people are just sitting around making up stories, then of course, anything goes. Every man does, and believes, that which is “right” in his own eyes. But they can’t all be right.

But, believeing there is an objective standard of truth, we adapt ourselves to it, not vice versa.

I was reading “Secret Origins of the Bible” this past week by Tim Callahan and this passage reminded me of this discussion.

I’m cutting out here and there - its a long passage. He tips his hand when he uses the word myth, but I think he has an interesting point.

He’s talking about the progression in the Old Testament from a fertility based religion to one based on ethics;

“It is unfortunate that the trade off for the development of an ethics-based religion, at least in the West, was that God had to be all good. Hence gaining wisdom with the unavoidable loss of Edenic childhood, rather than being seen as an inevitable part of growing up, was turned into a grievous sin. No longer could Yahweh be seen as denying human beings eternal life out of jealousy and fear for his position; since he was perfect it had to be the fault of Adam and Eve. Ultimately, since if it were only their sin the rest of us should logically have our chance at Eden as well, the theology had to be developed that we are all tainted with their sin from our birth. Now we were all damned and in need of God to save us. Thus, it is not surprising that a religion based on a savior gave us the concept of Original Sin. …….. In the original myth humanity lost immortality and an earthly paradise as a legacy of Adam and Eve’s sin, much as one might grow up in poverty because his parents squandered the family fortune. But, since Jesus has triumphed over the death that is Adam’s legacy for all of us, that means that sin, the source of the legacy, is also erased. This is a nice option but with a deadly catch: just as everyone got the legacy of death they also became sinners, even if they were not the ones doing the sinning. In our metaphor it would be as if the son not only inherited his parent’s debts, but found himself accused and condemned of a murder his father had committed? Even in Romans, Paul shows some understanding of the myth that God set up things up in such a way that Adam would fall (Rom 11:32): “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy on us all.” So God has, according to Paul, deliberately shut us up in our unbelief or disobedience just so he can later forgive us? Here is an irony indeed. Had we kept the original myth, we would not be agonizing over how a perfect god could create imperfection. We would know better than to think that God was perfect in the first place! We also would not have to believe that it was our fault (because of our imperfections) that the originally perfect world was made imperfect by human sin, even though we are the product of a perfect God. And, since God is perfect and is in charge, he is the one making us continue in our sinful ways, but it is still our fault. In short, because of the new myth of God’s perfection, we must indulge in the paradox of being depraved in order to keep God holy.”

Well - these are important questions - you raised them but not to the extend of Callahan. A Bible Doctrines class that’s worth the time must wrestle the hard questions - not spend the limited time forcing students to regurgitate perfectly memorized proof texts.

There are people who insist that Pauline Christianity is immoral. Is it?

I can choose the Koran if I want to, but I choose not to because I’ve already found the geniune article. I can choose to disbelieve the Bible and can accuse it of error. I can suggest that when the Bible talks about the sun rising the human author obviously thought that the sun revolved around the flat earth (four corners of the earth)… or I can understand that WE talk TODAY about the rising sun and talk about the four corners (compass directions) of the earth all the while knowing that these are descriptive expressions and understanding that the earth revolves around the sun and the earth isn’t flat. I choose not to believe in the evolutionary model (or evolutionary religion) because it has no basis in data. When I intellectually compare the world I see, the fossil record, etc. to an evolutionary model and to a creation model, the creation model requires far less of a leap of faith (but it is still faith).

There will always be the gainsayers, the heathen will rage, but God’s Word is settled forever in Heaven and He will have them in derision.

So blogjones, it is a choice isn’t it?

See, but if that’s the case, then Paul’s argument in Romans 5 is meaningless, unless you hold that both the fall and the crucifixion are metaphorical.

Many people do hold that both the fall and the crucifixion are metaphorical. See my Options B and C in my earlier post. I’m not making an argument either way. But, I’m saying that you can’t have it both ways; the Bible can’t be literal except when its not convenient and then its metaphorical, except of course when its not. If you hold to Option A - the Bible is the Word of God, then you have an issue. If you hold to B - it contains the World of God, then you pick and choose. If C - its a myth/legend/story/whatever, then its all literary criticism and it doesn’t matter.

These are the issues one must resolve (or spend one’s life studying, thinking about and trying to resolving) if one rejects the advice in an earlier post (not one of your mother’s - LOL) that you just shut up and drink the Koolaid.

Well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you, that the Bible would declare itself true? But besides that, I remember from Bible classes as well as personal study other things that point to the Bible’s veracity: fulfilled prophecy, agreement of several different authors over several hundred years, things like verses about the earth “hanging on nothing” long before that was univerally thought to be true, etc. Books have been written on those kinds of evidences.

On top of that, and more subjective, is the effect it has on people’s lives, my own included.

Not in this case — just like you can’t choose your great-grandparents.

On the second point, that’s not what the verse is saying: Imputation is a legal term. It’s being declared innocent or guilty. This verse is not saying that we have corrupt natures, but that we are declared guilty by God’s judgment.

Yes, but the declaration is based on the nature we inherited. Once we inhereited it, it’s there, and the only way it van be changed — both the nature and the judgment — is accepting His provison for it.

That is a different thing than an individual son not being held responsible for an individual dad’s individual sin sin (i.e., I would assume that after that decree in Ezekiel about each person answering for his own sin, if a situation such as Achan’s “sin in the camp” happened, his family would not have been destroyed along with him. Just he would have been.) This is not to say that people don’t suffer the consequences of another’s sin (the innocent bystander killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting), but people are answerable, accountable, for their own individual sins, not anyone else’s.

Make sense?