Ok, creation is good… God even said so. Though God seemed to make a slight oversight God caught it and fixed it before anyone really noticed. 🙂
I didn’t mean to suggest the Eden was anything less than paradise. It was paradise; I am not convinced God planned for humans to stay there. Silly Question: in the Hebrew Bible’s creation narratives, if God had intended Adam and Eve to live in the Garden, why wasn’t the whole globe the Garden? Why just a localized area by a couple of rivers?
I sense that God birthed humans into a perfect world (what else could God make), knowing that human freedom would had to exercised, thus it is less of a “fall” than a coming of age. Was it a breach in relationship–yes; and discipline is needed-yes. Maybe its like a toddler who defies her parents. Is it wrong – yeah… and its absolutely necessary for a child to develop a healthy differentiated self.
Good observation on the highlighting of TRAGEDY. Who is the protagonist in the creation account? If it is Adam/Eve than indeed it is tragic; if it is God, then I’m not sure it is a tragedy.
What does it mean to be Faithful to the gospel?
“Faithful to which Gospel?” Augustine’s? Luther’s? Calvin’s? Barth’s? Sweet’s? Simpson’s Jesus?” If our understanding of the gospel changes and grows over time – couldn’t our understanding of the fall as well?
Back to the point there is no doubt that how we understand the “fall” or what I might call the “emergence of humanity,” has a direct impact on our understanding of the Gospel. Many of the NT passages so appropriately cited stress God’s hatred of sin while imagining a life of followership. Is this not what we do with our kids all the time. When they are young, we give them clear rules, (maybe even 10 rules, call them commandments if you will), they are basic, they are written on heart of every child, even still we speak the rules. And still our kids break them. As our kids grow, our emphasis on commands shift and we focus more and more on the heart, we stress love of God and love of fellow persons, love of creation, love of self, and our discipline changes. The goal is never obedience though their actions reveal their love. The goal is something more like reciprocity. Aiding our children to develop into humans who can deny self in favor of loving others, including us.
Maybe the sins of our children is not our enemy. Could it be that sin is an unwitting participant in the training of children who can choose love.
Peace, dwight
