Interesting Thoughts on Original Sin

Quite so. How can an ammendment be laid down BEFORE one has even heard the motion.
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I don’t think this is right at all… Even if we don’t consider the New Testament in our picture, still we can say that the Old Testament is rife and shot through with the theology of the Messiah, the Mesuach… so the Jews of the Old Testament (and all messianic Jews since their time) have always had someone like Jesus in mind

 

That’s debatable. The author of Daniel in fact explained what his imagery meant over and over again. As apocalyptic literature, it also would have had a recognizable meaning to his intended audience(s).

The kinds of assumptions some Christians sometimes make about the OT/Tanakh is simply not the way we read a book. We don’t pick up a cookbook - that says it’s a cookbook - and assume what it’s really trying to tell us is theoretical astrophysics or political theory.

 

Doesn't the Book of Daniel give you the impression then, that it's supposed author understood things actually better than most?
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The author of 1 Maccabees, whom some scholars think may have been a contemporary of the author of Daniel, seemed to understand perfectly what Daniel was talking about.

 

And yet liberals read in the NT the plain proscriptions against homosexual behavior and restrictions on the ordination of women and insist, "That isn't what it really means!"

We don't read the Bible like a normal book because it's not a normal book. It was written by God himself to instruct us, through many authors working under the guidance and supervision of God the Holy Spirit. The Bible is sui generis in creation; there is no other thing like it. If you approach the Holy Bible in the same way you approach calculus or history or the detective novels of Mickey Spillane, you're doing it wrong. Yes, the Bible can often be subtle and rewards careful study. It must be read contextually and with awareness of the various genres of the Biblical books. Yet the Bible it was largely written in plain language to be understood by plain people; it is not some abstruse book of mysteries comprehensible only to experts. This is the Gnostic heresy, and we should reject it.

*"History" is the most corrupt and rotted-out discipline in the academy. You're actually better off ignoring most of it until our civilizational madness passes. Reading most current "history" books will only make you dumber. And this grotesque rot has begun metastasizing into the sciences as well. Nature and Science magazines, once paragons of scientific writing, now might as well be sold alongside Astrology Digest and People.

 

Again, this is just not true. He did not explain all of it. And it's not just Daniel, it's also Zechariah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and so on. See the below response to Tiffy.

Sure. And yet even then, despite Daniel being so much wiser than all of his contemporaries, there were so many things that were written that were sealed even for himself.

I heard but could not understand; so I said, ‘My lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?’ He said, ‘Go your way, Daniel, for the words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be purified, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked shall continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand.
~ Daniel 12.8-10​

That's either Gabriel or Jesus, depending on your take, telling Daniel the meaning of the past two and a half chapters he has written will be secret until the "end time". The OT is filled with content like this. Repeated references to knowledge being sealed until "the end of the age", until "the messiah comes", etc. etc.

And it's also just observably true. I still remember the first time I read the bible cover-to-cover. The OT was a slog, a lot of it completely undigestible. It took me a long time to power through it. The second time I went through, having been armed with a deeper knowledge of the NT, not just vague ideas of the parables but having actually read all of the words, it was suddenly a whole lot easier. Things that seemed completely nonsensical were suddenly clear and obvious. And what is remarkable is that a solid portion of those difficult chapters that became easy end with something alluding to "this knowledge is sealed until the messiah comes". It's an exceptionally faith giving exercise.

My question is this. If we already knew everything, if the NT is not useful in interpreting the OT, what was the point of Jesus teaching when He came? Why did he minister for three years, giving people knowledge, if everything could already be clearly understood? Jesus didn't have to be a teacher. Surely it's because some of what he taught was new. Surely it's because he unlocked understanding for us, enabled us to transition from wicked to wise, and fulfilled the prophecies of opening the scrolls at the end of the age.

I think you misunderstood. I'm saying that's the only interesting use for it. If that's not why you're doing it, then you should be reading it all as one combined holy scripture, not two separate bibles.

 

Agreed.

 

That is a theologian’s luxury that a historian does not have. Christians didn’t have a monopoly on interpreting the OT/Tanakh during the 1st century. If a new idea shows up in Paul (not Jesus) that’s not present in his contemporaries, it behooves us to ask why, and to question if this is what he really meant in the first place. This is a fair point to make, but we can keep talking past each other if you like.

 

I've always connected that aspect of OT prophesy to this. That's why I am reluctant to make speculative predictions about OT prophesies.
So should we all be. None of us knows more than Jesus did.

A point I think I have already made concerning the inadequacy of the ritualistic sacrifices to cleanse from sin before the voluntary death and resurrection of The Son of Man, whom Daniel wrote of. Any efficacy of those rituals would have derived from the blood of Jesus Christ, not from that of bulls or goats, for it is impossible that the blood of those could obtain remission of sins. The New Testament says so and it trumps the old.
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Original sin is a theological question, not a historical question? I'm addressing the blog post. The blog post is discussing theology, not history.

Christians didn't, and still don't, have a monopoly on interpreting the OT. But Christians do have more tools than the Jewish faith has, which is why we come to different conclusions.

Philo didn't reach the same conclusions as Paul because Philo wrote most of his stuff before Jesus began his ministry, and Philo didn't believe in Jesus for the last two decades of his life. He was focused on what was happening in Greece, not what was happening in Palestine. Also because two different contemporary academics will rarely reach the same findings, because they're different people. What did scholars think of Paul's thoughts after he wrote them? They found them persuasive and put them into the Canon.

I don't know if I would use the language that the "New trumps the Old", but mostly we're saying the same things.

 

As you know, the question of its exegetical basis is as much historical as it is theological. The concept doesn’t appear in Jesus’ recorded sayings, and contradicts what the OT/Tanakh says. So where did Paul get the idea, and is that what Paul was trying to say in the first place? I’m not sure it was, and that is a theological conclusion, or at least a historical conclusion with theological implications.

I didn’t post Dr. Enns’ article to discuss original sin in some ahistorical abstract manner divorced from all context. The historical aspect of the problem is part of his point. It can’t be separated so neatly from the theological aspect as you seem to suggest.

 

I was thinking rather of these statements of Jesus. "But I tell you . . . ." + Matt. 5:28, Matt. 5:32, Matt. 5:34, Matt. 5:39, Matt. 5:44. Jesus laying quite a lot of 'New Testament' trumps there and taking most of the tricks in the hand.
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But it doesn't contradict the OT. The idea that "If we ignore the NT and only read the OT, then it appears that Israelites were capable of not sinning" is not a contradiction. Just because it is harder to see doesn't mean we can't see it. Stalwart already posted OT verses that point to original sin:

God will never again destroy everything, because we are evil in our hearts from Day 1.
~ Genesis 8:21
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And that's important because Jesus teaches it is what comes from the heart that defiles us. We are all unclean, because we are evil in our hearts. What is more core to Original Sin than wickedness being intrinsic in out hearts, no matter what we do? I'll link two verses for each of the below claims because I don't have time to trawl my bible for every reference.

That our evilness comes from our hearts is not just in Genesis. It's repeated again and again in the OT.
~ Jeremiah 17:9, Ecclesiastes 9:3,

And this is a state of being we have from birth, just as is said in Genesis. The psalmist was born a sinner from the moment his mother conceived him, etc.
~ Psalm 51:5, Job 15.14

And this wickedness is linked to distancing ourselves to God (sinning). To be wicked in your heart is to separate yourself from God is to sin. And we are all wicked in heart so we are all sinners. And this is what is cleansed when we are born again.
~ Psalm 14.2-3, Job 15.15-16
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Is all of this obscure without Romans and Ephesians? Sure, absolutely. It's all a bit 50/50, "I don't know maybe it works, maybe it doesn't" stuff. But the NT says we are all born sinners, and Christ's sacrifice is what cleans us of the Sin of Adam. We were all, by nature, children of wrath and are now born again. And so armed with that, the OT suddenly becomes clear. There is no contradiction, obscurity of affirmation is not a contradiction.

The blog post makes five arguments:

1. God didn't explicitly say "Oh by the way original sin is now a thing" after Adam transgressed.
   We don't care about this if we accept better understanding of God and His Word is revealed over time. Which we do, because John 1.18 says so.
2. The OT doesn't explicitly say we were born sinners
   And conveniently says we can't use Psalm 51.5 (linked above) as rebuttal that says exactly that, because apparently we know for sure David was being hyperbolic. But even if we accept David was just writing some depressive angst poetry, and he wasn't actually a sinner from birth, it says so in Genesis, and Job. Even if we say it doesn't, it's present between the lines in Job, and Psalm 14, and Jeremiah, and Genesis 8, and Genesis 18-19. And I accept reading between the lines is hard before Jesus, but it becomes a lot easier after Jesus, which is why this whole exercise is pointless. It's not interesting to say "I know what the NT says about Adam, but lets look at what the OT says about Adam without any help from the Word made flesh". Why? If we take the NT as truth then it's a waste of time to entertain theological hypotheticals. If we don't take the NT as truth, then why do we take the OT as truth?
3. Most of the OT after Genesis 5 doesn't mention Adam again, so clearly he's not a big deal.
   This is just bad logic. He pre-empts the rebuttal of "but obviously everyone knew the story of Adam so they didn't need to repeat it every time to labour the subtext" by saying "that's nonsense". That's not good criticism, it's not enough to identify a reason your argument might be wrong, you need to actually address it.
4. No one blames Adam for Cain's murder, so obviously Adam is not to blame for Cain's actions.
   This is a fundamental failure to understand the early Genesis narrative, which is really damning for an academic. Before the knowledge of good and evil Cain would not have murdered, because he would not have been jealous. Obviously that context is there. Obviously the bible doesn't say "hey lets recap chapter 3 half way through chapter 4", because that's absurd. Genesis 3 being split from Genesis 4 was done by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1200s. If we're looking at this in the ancient context, Genesis 3 and Genesis 4 would be read together as one piece. We don't need to be reminded of what just happens.
   
   No one directly and audibly blames Adam, because we understand that just because we are fallen doesn't mean we all run around murdering each other. The murder was on Cain's shoulders, he wasn't an automaton. The narrative effect of these early Genesis events is to crescendo into the first climax at Noah. It starts with a little fall - disobeying god. This is the thing that starts everything in motion. After this we no longer dwell with God, and are destined to become more corrupted the longer we remain apart from Him. It all begins here. It accelerates into a single person committing fratricide a generation later. It eventually culminates into the whole world descending into chaos and debauchery that God needs to cleanse with the flood. Each generation is further removed from dwelling with God, and each generation gets more sinful. This sets up the tone for the entire OT. People fall. God reveals himself - to a prophet or through a miracle. The people's faith is renewed, and they become righteous. They fall again, and become more and more debauched. God gives them a representative (a King!). Each generation removed from David becomes more distant from God, and even the representative becomes corrupted. Everything points to an end of the age where the saviour will come, and the cycle will be broken.
   
   This climaxes with the arrival of the Son of God, and a method to cleanse the sin of the world (original sin) that started this whole mess. And the cycle is suddenly reversed. Suddenly God does not dwell in one finite place, as we all become more distance every generation. Now we are born again, and God dwells within each of us. How awesome! Now each generation cleansed by the water become more and more godly, as we come closer and closer to dwelling with God once more. This point misses the whole narrative arc of the bible. What a boring, unimaginative life he must have, if you can't even see the colour in a rainbow.
5. No one blames Adam for the flood, so obviously Adam is not to blame for the flood.
   This is just a ditto of the above, except that he kind of is in Genesis 8.21 (linked above). So not only is he missing the whole narrative purpose of the flood myth, he also misses that God says "I won't do this again because really you're all sinners". At this point there's really only two conclusions. Either our hearts are corrupted because we don't dwell with God (thanks Adam), or our hearts are corrupted because God botched up creation.

I fail to see his historical argument there. They all seem like theological arguments to me. They are all uninteresting, and easily rebutted by Ephesians and Romans (and those arguments Paul makes being based on the salvation ideas espoused by Jesus in the gospels), if we can just throw out his little qualifier.

So it doesn't really make any sense to ask "why the OT doesn't see it that way"? It does see it that way. Why didn't readers of the OT see it that way before Paul? Because they didn't have Jesus to help them out. Easy. Done. What a waste of a blog post. Maybe the entire point was to plug his book at the end?

 

Again, this is unfairly harsh. You’re a sharp guy. You know what the argument here really is. Since your objection is not about the texts themselves but about the assumptions that determine how we read them, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. It’s just not worth my time to try to convince anyone that the OT/Tanakh plainly says something other than what Christians want it to say, once one dispenses with inherited Christian presuppositions about it, presuppositions which were not derived from the text itself, and which weren’t there in the 1st century.

 

The above thinking of Dr. Peter Enns is from a human perspective, not from GOD's perspective. If he was a reader of the Holy Scriptures, first he would not call our GOD of mad, second he as a man should remember that the all humanity was born from the Devil, the only one who was not born from the Devil was JESUS. By the way, the earth was CURSED because of man, and Eve gave birth a demon - a MONSTER - and Eve called him Cain.

About the Israelites, the author of the above excerpt you quoted, he should remember that the descendants of Abraham were born and developed themselves as a great people in the Egypt , and much influenced by Egyptian customs for centuries, even by Egyptian idolatry - Deuteronomy 32:v.16-17-, and certainly they lived maybe like brute beasts in all kind of immorality-Exodus 32:v.24-25, but all of this was an normal life because there was not Law, so was not imputed as a sin.

Again: The above thinking of Dr. Peter Enns is from a human perspective, not from GOD's perspective. If he was a reader of the Holy Scriptures, he would know that GOD never , but never, would have "the idea that the Israelites were most certainly capable of not sinning", oh no, never. Dr. Peter only heard to speak of GOD, the Most High and Almighty GOD, but know not Him. GOD is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent, do you believe or not?

Dr. Peter is who says the evil things as above, not GOD. GOD would never think what Dr. Peter thought as above. In short words, in part, the purpose of the Law was for moral and social correction, and also for a divine worship service that it was pleasant for GOD, even under the direction of Moses.

The people of Israel were the body of Moses, just as the Church is the body of Christ JESUS. And the battle is against Satan. Michael the archangel did contend with the Devil, Michael disputed about the body of Moses, and now Michael will contend with the red Dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, now Michael will dispute about the body of our Lord JESUS Christ.

Be careful and get ready

 

I know what the argument really is - I've addressed it openly. I don't agree that the OT plainly says something other than what "I want it to say", but if I entertain that idea, I don't understand why Jesus teaching salvation theory not derived from the OT is a problem for you. When the prophets taught something new not found in earlier scrolls that was not a problem, as they were prophets and that is what prophets are there for. Moses taught of a new covenant not found in their earlier histories because God spoke to him. Jesus taught of a new covenant not found in the OT because He is God. God gives the word to the people through the prophets, and Jesus was the Word they were given - Jesus has more authority to say something new than any who came before Him.

If what Jesus said about all being guilty of sin, and Him being the lamb of God offered to take away the sins of the world is not found in the OT (and, to be clear, I think it is for the reasons I detailed above) then that's fine. Jesus taught many new things. Add salvation theory and the intrinsic sinfulness of man to the list.

Therefore, we can be confident that the doctrine of original sin told to us plainly by Paul was not pulled from thin air. He was working off a new understanding of salvation given by Christ.

I do not think it is harsh to say it's a waste of time for a Christian to throw all this away when reading specific books in the bible. I don't see why I should draw an arbitrary line between the OT and the NT and say I ought to read Isaiah without any context given by the Gospels, but for some reason its totally fine for me to read Judges alongside Samuel.

 

In addition to my post above-#56- I would like to remind you that JESUS revealed to the rebellious and fallen Jews from the beginning-John 8:v.44- that they (like us Gentiles) needed to be born again, born of water and spirit.

God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in Truth. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh (is born of the sin, creation of the Devil, the Usurper of GOD's creation, sowing or planting his nature) ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
JESUS said: If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of celestial things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.John 3:v.12-15. And Hebrews 1:v.6 says: And AGAIN, when He bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, He saith, And let all the angels of GOD worship Him.

 

Quite! And Jesus did give a hint at least that there was something inherently wrong with humankind. Matt.7:11, Luke 11:13. The interesting thing here though is that in spite of us all being 'evil' in the supposedly original sin kind of way, we still, according to Jesus, have a 'Heavenly Father' who is more than just willing to give us 'evil' people God's Holy Spirit, as soon as we ASK Him. According to Jesus even such inherently 'evil' people are not disowned or damned by God the Father, no question about it.

God still wants everyone to want him.
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I've been busily searching for an article J. I. Packer wrote some time ago on this issue, and I finally found it (PDF LINK). Packer ably dispenses with the "cosmic child abuse" canard:

I still laugh at "smartypants". It's about as salty as Packer ever allows himself to be in his writing.