Does anyone have any arguments in support of the following proposition?
c) It is possible that God is saving all infants who die, but if He is, it would be wrong for us to know about it.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Is It Even Possible?
Does anyone have any arguments to support either of the following propositions?
a) Based on what the Bible says, God could save all people who die as infants but has chosen not to.
b) God could not save all people who die as infants without contradicting certain biblical doctrines.
a) Based on what the Bible says, God could save all people who die as infants but has chosen not to.
b) God could not save all people who die as infants without contradicting certain biblical doctrines.
Original Guilt
One of the major issues for me in regard to the question of infant salvation is the idea of Original Guilt. Even though this appears to be a frequent point of division between Calvinists and Arminians, at its essence this is not a matter of God's sovereignty, but a matter of determining the exact nature of God's judgment of humanity.
Presently I see more evidence against the idea of Original Guilt than for it, but I still find evidence in both directions so I am laying out what I have found so far so others can provide input.
The core of the question at hand is by what exactly does God judge us? There seem to be three potential sources of material God can judge a person: the actions that person performs during his life, that person's inherited sinful nature, and the sin of Adam. How exactly are these things taken into account in regard to God's judgment of us?
And to complicate the matter more, it appears that there may be more than one form of judgment (since that is a very general action) and it may be possible but God could rely upon different factors for different forms of judgment. For instance, there is the final judgment at the end time. But the Bible describes judgments of smaller scope that, while still a depiction of God's holiness and righteousness, do not appear to employ all the rules and dynamics that are talked about in relation to the final judgment. (For example, the story of Jonah and Nineveh. While that incident says much about both God's judgment and mercy, there is no indication that certain dynamics like "Christ's imputed righteousness" played effect here like they will turn the final judgment.)
(Note: in this essay I am assuming that most people who believe in Original Guilt also believe in Original Sin. If anyone believes that people inherit the guilt but not the sinful nature I would be curious to hear how they think that would play out and how in the world they reached that conclusion.)
Romans 5 is at the heart of this issue, and that is what I will be focusing on in this essay.
To begin with, there is a chain of cause and effect that I believe most Christians would agree with. Adam sinned, which led to our sin, which in turn led to our condemnation. Since in general even the proponents of Original Guilt would agree that our actions play at least some role in our judgment, they should not have much to disagree with in that chain of cause and effect I just described. The real question is what other causes and effects are connected alongside that chain. To believe in Inherited Guilt would be to say that Adam's sin caused two effects: the inheritance of a sinful nature and the inheritance of his guilt, which in turn both cause condemnation.
Now, I am not clear how most people would define that condemnation in relation to its causes. Do the inherited sin and the enacted sin generate the exact same condemnation or different forms of condemnation? If a person has both (as I suppose most people would) then would their resulting condemnations be redundant? And if there are two parallel cause/effects along the chain how do Bible scholars know when Paul is referring to one or the other or do they assume that Paul is always talking about both of them at the same time?
Another point I should make before diving into the text is that there is two subtly different understandings of Original Guilt. The first is the idea of Inherited Guilt, which I thoroughly disagree with. That is pure inference. Paul never suggests that the guilt, or the condemnation, is inherited. The other understanding of Original Guilt, which I believe is more plausible, is that when Adam sinned, we and the rest of humanity sinned with him. This is a subtle distinction that most of the time does not make much difference but there are some circumstances where the distinction is important. But either way, I believe both lead to problems.
With those initial points laid out, I will now proceed to the text in question.
"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned-" (Romans 5:12)
Here it is important to note that the Greek word for "spread" (which also is translated as "pass") is dierchomai, one of the common words for "go" or moving from one place to another, with the prefix of di, which suggests "through" or "by means of". This verse is not talking about the inheritance of sin; that is dealt with in the later verses. This verse is explaining how death has traveled throughout humanity. He says "because all sinned." This is an argument for how death spread to all men. He is making a case that all men die because all men sinned. This argument would make no sense if Paul believed that we were condemned to die because we inherited Adam's guilt. In general, the inherited guilt would come before active sin, so then death would be spread by passive sin before it could be spread by active sin.
Thus, this passage must either be interpreted to mean that there is no Original Sin or that when Paul says "all sinned" he is saying that we all sinned through Adam.
As Paul says in Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death." A wage is something a person earns, not something a person inherits. The question in my mind is whether or not one of the sins I have committed is eating of the forbidden fruit in Eden.
"For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." (Romans 6:4)
Wayne Grudem wrote of this passage "Here Paul points out that from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, people do not have God's written laws. Though their sins were "not counted" (as infractions of the law), they still died. The fact that they died is very good proof that God counted people guilty on the basis of Adam's sin."
Here Grudem makes a number of assumptions. He is assuming that the only way they could have died was because of being guilty for Adam's sin, and that their sins were not counted for anything. Yet Paul says there was still sin during that time, and the book of Genesis has many examples of God judging people for sin, so God clearly counted their deeds toward something. Also, in verse 13 Paul does not say "sins", which would unquestionably refer to actions, but the more ambiguous "sin" which could still be referring to actions but could also be referring to the more general state of sin. I will further explore this idea later.
I said most of that to show that though Paul may have agreed with Grudem's theology in these matters, this passage does not prove Grudem's point like Grudem says it does.
I would love to go to a point by point analysis of this passage but I think I need to sum up the main ideas I want to highlight and that then individual verses can be brought up in the comments.
One of the pivotal concepts in this issue is the analogy between Adam and Jesus. That to me is the strongest support for the idea of Original Guilt; the reasoning being that if the righteousness of Jesus is imputed to us, so must the sin of Adam have been imputed to us in an identical manner. Thus, to question the imputation of Adam's sin would be to question the imputation of Jesus' righteousness.
There is a lot of weight to that argument, and I have great respect for it, but it has limits. The main problem with that reasoning is that there is not a 1:1 relationship between the imputation from Adam and the imputation from Christ. Paul himself says that "the free gift is not like the trespass." (v14). While Adam was a type of the one to come, they are not perfectly symmetrical. Paul himself lists exceptions to the symmetry, and in no way does he suggest that his list is exhaustive.
For example, in verse 17 he says "If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned to that one man, much more will those who receive abundance of grace and of the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ." Yet even Christians who have Christ's righteousness imputed to them still die physical deaths.
Earlier Grudem argued that physical death was a proof of condemnation. But if a person who is washed in the blood of Christ is above condemnation, how is it that they can still die? As I said before, clearly the analogy between Adam and Christ is not entirely symmetrical, so it is not rational to say that any dynamic that appears on one side must also appear on the other side.
With that said, in many ways the concept of imputed sin makes a lot of sense and I think the later parts of chapter 5 more strongly supports that idea then the earlier parts. However, I cannot overlook the fact that this is still one half of a chapter, while the rest of the Bible seems to consistently contradict it, which is what I will address next.
If we have Adam's sin imputed to us, then that would essentially trump any sin we commit within our physical lives. Why is it that the rest of Bible never says that we are guilty of hell soley because of Adam's sin? Why would it put so much emphasis on what actions people perform during their lives? If you read the Bible for face value, you would generally get the impression that all men are supposed to live without sin and yet they are not capable of it. And yet if the doctrine of Original Guilt is true, then it wouldn't matter even if someone lived a perfect life, they sinned before they were born through Adam. Paul depicts the Law as a tool to show us our inability. But if the doctrine of Original Guilt is true then our inability is irrelevant.
Which brings me to the other issue within this issue: the nature of Jesus Christ. As it says in Hebrews 2:17-18, "Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted." and in Hebrews 4:15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."
How is it that Jesus did not sin even though he was tempted? Because of his divine nature. So would proponents of Original Guilt say that Jesus inherited the fleshly body of Adam and even the sinful temptations of Adam and yet somehow Adam's sin is not imputed to Jesus? How is that? The Bible talks about Jesus' divine nature overriding the sinful nature of humanity, but where does it talk about the imputation from Adam being overridden?
Some people say that because Jesus did not have a human father the chain of inherited guilt was broken, but the Bible never describes such a principle. I'm not saying that it's not possible, but the doctrine of Original Guilt is already based upon some amount of inference, so here we would have an inference based upon inference. Inferences based upon inferences can be true, but the further you go with such a chain the more fragile and dangerous the reasoning becomes.
Also, as I said before it is much harder to defend the idea of inherited guilt. Original Guilt is more defendable if it is seen as an instantaneous action in time that immediately applied to all of humanity. So that would mean Christ's exemption did not take place when he was born but he was exempt the moment Adam bit into the forbidden fruit. The Bible says nothing about anything like that.
Besides, along similar lines as what I said before, it makes no sense that not having a human father would interrupt the imputed sin but not the sinful nature. (To be tempted and yet not sin, Jesus must of had, on some level, a desire to sin, but that fleshly nature was nullified by his divine nature.)
Romans 5 seems to make a strong (though not exactly explicit) case for Original Guilt and I am open to believing it. But I would have to say that it is also one of the most awkwardly written passages in the New Testament and it seems like that passage is the only source of this doctrine, a doctrine that even if true does not easily fit with the rest of Scripture, so I am eager to hear what other Christians would have to say about it.
Presently I see more evidence against the idea of Original Guilt than for it, but I still find evidence in both directions so I am laying out what I have found so far so others can provide input.
The core of the question at hand is by what exactly does God judge us? There seem to be three potential sources of material God can judge a person: the actions that person performs during his life, that person's inherited sinful nature, and the sin of Adam. How exactly are these things taken into account in regard to God's judgment of us?
And to complicate the matter more, it appears that there may be more than one form of judgment (since that is a very general action) and it may be possible but God could rely upon different factors for different forms of judgment. For instance, there is the final judgment at the end time. But the Bible describes judgments of smaller scope that, while still a depiction of God's holiness and righteousness, do not appear to employ all the rules and dynamics that are talked about in relation to the final judgment. (For example, the story of Jonah and Nineveh. While that incident says much about both God's judgment and mercy, there is no indication that certain dynamics like "Christ's imputed righteousness" played effect here like they will turn the final judgment.)
(Note: in this essay I am assuming that most people who believe in Original Guilt also believe in Original Sin. If anyone believes that people inherit the guilt but not the sinful nature I would be curious to hear how they think that would play out and how in the world they reached that conclusion.)
Romans 5 is at the heart of this issue, and that is what I will be focusing on in this essay.
To begin with, there is a chain of cause and effect that I believe most Christians would agree with. Adam sinned, which led to our sin, which in turn led to our condemnation. Since in general even the proponents of Original Guilt would agree that our actions play at least some role in our judgment, they should not have much to disagree with in that chain of cause and effect I just described. The real question is what other causes and effects are connected alongside that chain. To believe in Inherited Guilt would be to say that Adam's sin caused two effects: the inheritance of a sinful nature and the inheritance of his guilt, which in turn both cause condemnation.
Now, I am not clear how most people would define that condemnation in relation to its causes. Do the inherited sin and the enacted sin generate the exact same condemnation or different forms of condemnation? If a person has both (as I suppose most people would) then would their resulting condemnations be redundant? And if there are two parallel cause/effects along the chain how do Bible scholars know when Paul is referring to one or the other or do they assume that Paul is always talking about both of them at the same time?
Another point I should make before diving into the text is that there is two subtly different understandings of Original Guilt. The first is the idea of Inherited Guilt, which I thoroughly disagree with. That is pure inference. Paul never suggests that the guilt, or the condemnation, is inherited. The other understanding of Original Guilt, which I believe is more plausible, is that when Adam sinned, we and the rest of humanity sinned with him. This is a subtle distinction that most of the time does not make much difference but there are some circumstances where the distinction is important. But either way, I believe both lead to problems.
With those initial points laid out, I will now proceed to the text in question.
"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned-" (Romans 5:12)
Here it is important to note that the Greek word for "spread" (which also is translated as "pass") is dierchomai, one of the common words for "go" or moving from one place to another, with the prefix of di, which suggests "through" or "by means of". This verse is not talking about the inheritance of sin; that is dealt with in the later verses. This verse is explaining how death has traveled throughout humanity. He says "because all sinned." This is an argument for how death spread to all men. He is making a case that all men die because all men sinned. This argument would make no sense if Paul believed that we were condemned to die because we inherited Adam's guilt. In general, the inherited guilt would come before active sin, so then death would be spread by passive sin before it could be spread by active sin.
Thus, this passage must either be interpreted to mean that there is no Original Sin or that when Paul says "all sinned" he is saying that we all sinned through Adam.
As Paul says in Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death." A wage is something a person earns, not something a person inherits. The question in my mind is whether or not one of the sins I have committed is eating of the forbidden fruit in Eden.
"For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." (Romans 6:4)
Wayne Grudem wrote of this passage "Here Paul points out that from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, people do not have God's written laws. Though their sins were "not counted" (as infractions of the law), they still died. The fact that they died is very good proof that God counted people guilty on the basis of Adam's sin."
Here Grudem makes a number of assumptions. He is assuming that the only way they could have died was because of being guilty for Adam's sin, and that their sins were not counted for anything. Yet Paul says there was still sin during that time, and the book of Genesis has many examples of God judging people for sin, so God clearly counted their deeds toward something. Also, in verse 13 Paul does not say "sins", which would unquestionably refer to actions, but the more ambiguous "sin" which could still be referring to actions but could also be referring to the more general state of sin. I will further explore this idea later.
I said most of that to show that though Paul may have agreed with Grudem's theology in these matters, this passage does not prove Grudem's point like Grudem says it does.
I would love to go to a point by point analysis of this passage but I think I need to sum up the main ideas I want to highlight and that then individual verses can be brought up in the comments.
One of the pivotal concepts in this issue is the analogy between Adam and Jesus. That to me is the strongest support for the idea of Original Guilt; the reasoning being that if the righteousness of Jesus is imputed to us, so must the sin of Adam have been imputed to us in an identical manner. Thus, to question the imputation of Adam's sin would be to question the imputation of Jesus' righteousness.
There is a lot of weight to that argument, and I have great respect for it, but it has limits. The main problem with that reasoning is that there is not a 1:1 relationship between the imputation from Adam and the imputation from Christ. Paul himself says that "the free gift is not like the trespass." (v14). While Adam was a type of the one to come, they are not perfectly symmetrical. Paul himself lists exceptions to the symmetry, and in no way does he suggest that his list is exhaustive.
For example, in verse 17 he says "If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned to that one man, much more will those who receive abundance of grace and of the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ." Yet even Christians who have Christ's righteousness imputed to them still die physical deaths.
Earlier Grudem argued that physical death was a proof of condemnation. But if a person who is washed in the blood of Christ is above condemnation, how is it that they can still die? As I said before, clearly the analogy between Adam and Christ is not entirely symmetrical, so it is not rational to say that any dynamic that appears on one side must also appear on the other side.
With that said, in many ways the concept of imputed sin makes a lot of sense and I think the later parts of chapter 5 more strongly supports that idea then the earlier parts. However, I cannot overlook the fact that this is still one half of a chapter, while the rest of the Bible seems to consistently contradict it, which is what I will address next.
If we have Adam's sin imputed to us, then that would essentially trump any sin we commit within our physical lives. Why is it that the rest of Bible never says that we are guilty of hell soley because of Adam's sin? Why would it put so much emphasis on what actions people perform during their lives? If you read the Bible for face value, you would generally get the impression that all men are supposed to live without sin and yet they are not capable of it. And yet if the doctrine of Original Guilt is true, then it wouldn't matter even if someone lived a perfect life, they sinned before they were born through Adam. Paul depicts the Law as a tool to show us our inability. But if the doctrine of Original Guilt is true then our inability is irrelevant.
Which brings me to the other issue within this issue: the nature of Jesus Christ. As it says in Hebrews 2:17-18, "Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted." and in Hebrews 4:15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."
How is it that Jesus did not sin even though he was tempted? Because of his divine nature. So would proponents of Original Guilt say that Jesus inherited the fleshly body of Adam and even the sinful temptations of Adam and yet somehow Adam's sin is not imputed to Jesus? How is that? The Bible talks about Jesus' divine nature overriding the sinful nature of humanity, but where does it talk about the imputation from Adam being overridden?
Some people say that because Jesus did not have a human father the chain of inherited guilt was broken, but the Bible never describes such a principle. I'm not saying that it's not possible, but the doctrine of Original Guilt is already based upon some amount of inference, so here we would have an inference based upon inference. Inferences based upon inferences can be true, but the further you go with such a chain the more fragile and dangerous the reasoning becomes.
Also, as I said before it is much harder to defend the idea of inherited guilt. Original Guilt is more defendable if it is seen as an instantaneous action in time that immediately applied to all of humanity. So that would mean Christ's exemption did not take place when he was born but he was exempt the moment Adam bit into the forbidden fruit. The Bible says nothing about anything like that.
Besides, along similar lines as what I said before, it makes no sense that not having a human father would interrupt the imputed sin but not the sinful nature. (To be tempted and yet not sin, Jesus must of had, on some level, a desire to sin, but that fleshly nature was nullified by his divine nature.)
Romans 5 seems to make a strong (though not exactly explicit) case for Original Guilt and I am open to believing it. But I would have to say that it is also one of the most awkwardly written passages in the New Testament and it seems like that passage is the only source of this doctrine, a doctrine that even if true does not easily fit with the rest of Scripture, so I am eager to hear what other Christians would have to say about it.
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