Anonymous wrote:
In Adam all died, Jesus included. Thus you would have to admit ... to go along with your [position] of everyone dying in Adam. The fact is that Scripture does not teach that anyone died in Adam, not spiritually. Physically all die (future and present tense) in Adam per 1 Corinthians 15:22 "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Spiritually, however, all may say with Paul "I was alive apart from the Law once, but when the commandment came sin sprang to life and I died" per Romans 7:9. All are born spiritually alive, yet only Jesus lived an entire adult life that way and died sinless.
I answer:
Let me go through this one line-by-line.
A: "In Adam all died, Jesus included."
I answer: No, Jesus was not "In Adam," and consequently Jesus did not die "in Adam." This is actually important to recognize, because it is Adam's sin that placed the entire human race in need of a Savior.
Because Jesus did not die in Adam, Jesus could die FOR Adam.
Moreover, just as surely as all those in Adam died in Adam, so also surely all those in Jesus (those for whom Jesus died) will be quickened in Jesus. This, of course, is important and relates back to the original atonement post.
A: "Thus you would have to admit ... to go along with your [position] of everyone dying in Adam."
I answer: "In Adam" qualifies "all," just as "in Christ" modifies the other "all." So, of course, no one would "have to admit" such a thing.
A: "The fact is that Scripture does not teach that anyone died in Adam, not spiritually."
I answer: Sure it does, as has already been established.
A: "Physically all die (future and present tense) in Adam per 1 Corinthians 15:22 "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.""
I answer: I Corinthians is speaking of both spiritual and physical death, but the primary emphasis is on spiritual death.
A: "Spiritually, however, all may say with Paul "I was alive apart from the Law once, but when the commandment came sin sprang to life and I died" per Romans 7:9."
I answer: Paul's comment is about his self-perception. When he did not understand the law, he thought he was alive. When he realized what the law required, he realized he was dead. The law did not "come" into existence in Paul's lifetime, but rather came into Paul's awareness in his lifetime. Thus Paul writes:
Romans 7:10And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
A: "All are born spiritually alive, yet only Jesus lived an entire adult life that way and died sinless."
I answer: No, only Christ was born spiritually alive. See John 3.
-Turretinfan
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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17 comments:
An Anonymous commenter pointed out that Christ took on human flesh.
Christ did have a true human body. No doubt.
That's really not relevant to this dusussion.
-Turretinfan
And to be clear, Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man.
-Turretinfan
What I can gather, a johnny come late into it leee, is the point about Christ.
Yes, Christ is fully man. It was from a woman of a man and woman that God chose to send His Eternal Presence, His Son, "to become".
What needs to be pointed out and it seems to me anonymous isn't addressing it is the verse:
Heb 10:5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;
As I have referred, we, those of Adam's race, are four parts, spirit, soul, body and "flesh".
The only part of Adam's race Jesus was, was flesh!
I would submit a revelation that the reason you do not see the word "body" in any of the "Old Testament" writings, Psalms 39 and 40 is simply because there wasn't a body yet just the mere understanding of a body.
I could go further with this and assert why Peter wrote what he wrote about the "Spirit of Christ" in "them", prophets of Adam's race, creatures of God's election, who were searching the time and "person" of Our Salvation:
1Pe 1:10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,
1Pe 1:11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
1Pe 1:12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
I might add that now angels both fallen and Elect angels need look no longer! Christ has come. Christ has hung on the cursed tree!
Christ has appeared to many being vindicated by the Spirit and now sits where all the Holy Angels saw He was not after and before and now is!
Might I take liberty and think as the Holy Angels thought?
Wow, WHERE DID HE GO?
WOW, HERE HE IS, BACK FROM WHERE HE WENT.
Rev 7:11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,
Rev 7:12 saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
Anonymous wrote: (and I inadvertently rejected) If fully man, he was in Adam.
I answer:
No.
But let me go a step further and explain why:
God was Jesus' Father, not Adam.
-Turretinfan
The commenter is apparently confused.
Avoiding the issue of traducianism at the moment, what the text is talking about is the imputation of Adam's sin.
Scripture recognizes the principle of federal headship. This is a thoroughly Jewish concept. We can find it every time a generation accepts or renews a covenant. We find it when Hebrews speaks of Aaron by way of Levi being "in" Abraham and paying tribute to Melchizedek as a priest (making Melchizedek superior).
When we say that Jesus did not "die" in Adam, we are denying not only that He was born with original sin, but we also deny that He was imputed with Adam's sin. Why? Because Jesus did not have Adam for a father. Rather, Adam's inheritance came to him by way of his mother, and federal headship does not pass from mother to child (as in modern Jewish thinking about who is a Jew) but by way of the father. Jesus' father is God.
Excellent points again!
"God was Jesus' Father, not Adam."
Adam wasn't my immediate father either, nor yours. You are being ridiculous. Adam was Jesus father according to the flesh, as David (from David's loins according to Acts 2:30) and as Abraham were. As Paul says "the fathers, of whom Christ came concerning the flesh"--which means he came through Adam, through Abraham, through David. Adam is his father. In fact, Luke's genealogy ends with him being "the son of Adam, the son of God." You are rejecting Biblical truth in saying that Adam was not his father.
1) Unlike Jesus, Adam is in our paternal line, whereas for Jesus, Adam was only in Jesus' maternal line;
b) Luke's geneaology is Jesus' adopted geneaology via Joseph:
Luke 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
... continuing through to
Luke 3:38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Jesus was the son of man by Mary only, and not by Joseph, for Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and not by Joseph's power, for Mary was a virgin until Jesus was born.
-Turretinfan
Thanks, Natamllc, for your thoughts!
-Turretinfan
1) Unlike Jesus, Adam is in our paternal line, whereas for Jesus, Adam was only in Jesus' maternal line;
So? "in sin my MOTHER conceived me" not "in sin my FATHER conceived me" -- maternal only conception does not avoid original sin if indeed Psalm 51:5 is teaching original sin to begin with. Jesus is not less human by having only a mother, and it doesn't make him not a descendant of Adam.
While the words of Psalm 50: "in iniquities my mother conceived me" -- which seem to hint at concupiscence -- fail in making Jesus the heir of original sin, since he wasn't born by carnal union, but by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Virgin Mary, He seems to have escaped that.
But the doctrine of original sin via Anselm's "God's honor being harmed" argument, does not. That's the problem. If Christ had a body from matter created at the beginning (the entire earth and the entire human race being cursed for Adam's sin), then He was guilty of imputed original sin. End of story.
There are two ways out of this mess:
1) Immaculate Conception -- it makes no sense.
2) Believe that Christ's body was not taken from the human flesh of the Virgin. --> docetism.
... or just original sin rest ...
THE CHOICE IS YOURS!
Captain Planet,
The solution to the false dilemma is that original sin is based on federal headship, i.e. father-relationship.
Adam represented himself and those descendents for whom he was the father.
Though Christ descended from Adam, he did so only maternally and consequently, he - unlike every other human being - did not inherit the guilt of Adam's first sin or Adam's corrupt nature.
Christ did live in the material world, and his body was an ordinary human body, even though it came to be extraordinarily in the miracle of the Incarnation.
-Turretinfan
A: "So? "in sin my MOTHER conceived me" not "in sin my FATHER conceived me""
I answer: False dichotomy. Scripture records who begat David. It was Jesse.
A: "maternal only conception does not avoid original sin if indeed Psalm 51:5 is teaching original sin to begin with."
I answer: (a) Jesus was not an example of "maternal only conception" (he was begotten of the Father) and (b) Psalm 51:5 provides evidence of original sin, without explaining the basis thereof.
A: "Jesus is not less human by having only a mother,"
I answer: Jesus did not have only a mother. Jesus had a father: God. Jesus was not less human because God was his father.
A: "and it doesn't make him not a descendant of Adam."
I answer: I agree that Jesus was a descendent of Adam, but only maternally.
-Turretinfan
"Captain Planet" was me. (Sorry, I just felt the pun was funny).
Anyway, it doesn't. What about the innocent little soil/ground from which Adam was taken? If Christ was a man born with a body borrowed from our own cursed flesh, then there's no way He can escape original sin. That's it.
Quack! :p
Lucian,
Thanks for your response.
I don't see any further argument or explanation of your position, but the fact that you have not been persuaded to accept the position as it has been explained is noted.
You seem to have confused Anselm with the Reformed position, and then decided to battle that windmill even after your mistake had been pointed out.
I leave you to it.
-Turretinfan
TF
if I might intrude a bit more here?
The grand question for me, and you quite realistically settle it, is this:
am I a "Son of God" conjoined to THEE ONLY BEGOTTEN Son of God, Jesus, Whose Father is My Father, your Father and Everyone's Father that He says is "His" Sons, and "Daughters"? In the next Life of course, there is neither male nor female.
The bigger question or the more "revealing" question then becomes, WHY WOULD YOU NOT WANT TO BE A SON OF GOD IN THAT CONTEXT, unless, you are indeed of your father the Devil?
I stake my stand here:
2Ti 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
2Ti 2:16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,
2Ti 2:17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,
2Ti 2:18 who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some.
2Ti 2:19 But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."
Lucian,
I received your latest comment.
I had written: "You seem to have confused Anselm with the Reformed position, and then decided to battle that windmill even after your mistake had been pointed out."
Your most recent comment amazingly asserts "You've succeeded in pointing no mistakes out."
Let me put your mistake in bold this time, so that it is clearly pointed out to you:
"You seem to have confused Anselm with the Reformed position, and then decided to battle that windmill even after your mistake had been pointed out."
-Turretinfan
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