I thought you were a troll because i got the feeling you weren't genuine, but were rather just being annoying for the sake of it, but now i can see you're the real deal, so all i can say is this...
You pray for me, & i'll think for you.
Doesn't an 'allegorical' Garden of Eden nullify the need for a Ransom?
by AK - Jeff 52 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Leolaia
Still not clear to me difference in concept between WTS ransom and NT ransom.
The difference is simple. The Society has a detailed worked-out explanation of what the "ransom" is supposed to be. The NT does not. The metaphor is used without explanation; it must thus be interpreted. One could exegetically deduce what each author possibly or probably meant by the term, but this is different from the project of most interpreters who aim to construct a single cohesive doctrine on salvation. This involves mixing together in a creative way the many various metaphors and concepts found in the NT (hence the chimera "ransom sacrifice" which occurs in the Bible about as often as the phrase "paradise earth"). The Society explains the ransom by way of the Eden narrative (as AK Jeff puts it, "the idea of a 'ransom' in which 'the last Adam' overcomes the sin of Adam in the garden"), a concept that is alien to the contexts in which the term occurs in the NT with respect to Jesus' death and resurrection.
The term "ransom" in Hellenistic Greek referred to the price paid for the release of captives or the manumission of slaves (cf. 1 Clement 55:2, 59:4, Hermas Mandate 8.10), so there has to be a payee and captor. When the term occurs in the NT, the context does not say who the captor or payee is supposed to be. The Society pussyfoots around this question but their (unbiblical) "scales" explanation of the ransom implies that the payee is God — he holds Adam and his descendents guilty for sin and divine justice requires a sentence that requires a ransom. They claim that Adam by bringing death upon his descendents is thus a murderer, and thus as a murderer could not be ransomed from his divine sentence, but "God is pleased to approve the application of the ransom to redeem those of Adam's offspring who avail themselves of such a release" (Insight, Vol. 2, 1988, p. 736), this clearly shows that God is construed as the payee. The Society also mixes in Pauline ideas from Romans (e.g. the idea that death acquits one from sin, although this is a misinterpretation since for Paul the debt was not to God but to sin).
In contrast to this, there are several other possible implied captors/payees for the NT use of the term "ransom" in relation to Jesus' death: abstract captors like death, sin, or the Law (the Torah) or a personal captor in the powers/sovereignties/elements responsible for the Law. So in various places in the NT, Jesus' death/resurrection is construed as effecting a "release of captives" from death (cf. Ephesians 4:8-9; cf. the ransom concept in 1:14), with God not as the payee but as the payer, who has purchased his people who had previously been held captive (cf. Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 7:23; cf. also the exegetical basis in Isaiah 61:1). Paul in particular had a related concept of sin/death as a slaveholder holding mankind in bondage, the release from which only occurs at death; he argued that Christ's death may substitute for this, allowing believers to share in Christ's death via baptism and thereafter become slaves of God instead of slaves of sin (this is set out in detail in Romans 5-6). At the same time, Paul argued that people were in bondage to the Law, which in turn held them in bondage to sin, so Christ's death also effected a voluntary release from the Law, and "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake" (Galatians 3:13). And Paul also construed the Law as put in place by angels/powers/elements/sovereignties/archons who also were responsible for Christ's death (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:6-8, Galatians 3:19; cf. Ephesians 3:10, 1 Peter 1:12), thus Christ "has overriden the Law, and cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay, he has done away with it by nailing it to the cross, and so he got rid of the sovereignties and the powers, and paraded them in public behind him in his triumphal procession" (Colossians 2:14-15). But it is unclear exactly which of these was meant in the NT references to the "ransom", and so interpreters have taken different theological positions on the meaning of this metaphor (and its relation to other metaphors, such as the sacrificial conceptions in the NT).
The last potential "captor" mentioned above was the starting point of the "gnostic" trajectory of interpreting Christ as a Redeemer; the Demiurge (Creator) malevolently holds mankind in bondage through the Law and through the weakness of the flesh and matter, whereas Jesus Christ came to provide freedom from this slavery and a way to escape to the true God. The early Church Fathers and apologists in their doctrinal battles against the gnostics incorporated the gnostic view in part, replacing the role of the Demiurge with that of the Devil, so now the Devil was construed as the captor that Jesus' death helped set mankind free from. But this is a radical departure from the Pauline view, as none of the church fathers would have agreed that the Devil was responsible for the Law. Some later writers like Athanasius demythologized the doctrine of redemption and went back to the abstract concepts characteristic of the NT, arguing that through the Law death gained a legal hold since God had decreed punishment for sin, and thus he offered himself to death via a body that could die, thereby expiating for all the punishment required by the Law, thereby annulling the Law without resulting in God changing his mind or withdrawing the prohibition of willful sin. The concept of "original sin" is certainly part of the picture but the logic (to the extent it could even be regarded as logical) of the redemption for Athanasius does not require it.
I don't think that most ancient minds thought in the theological depth expressed by Leo here.
Actually I was being rather cursory; the arguments found in the literature can be quite complex and intricate. Even Paul was very abstract.
Point is: Don't most Christians believe that mankind needs 'ransomed' from sin inherited from Adam and Eve? And don't many of them fall back to defend the ransom with claiming allegory for the GoE account when scientific evidence overwhelms the story?
But that was not your original point. You were referring to those who allegorize the Eden narrative, which is not the view of "most Christians" who have a concept of "sin inherited from Adam and Eve" (!), a quite non-allegorical view of the Eden narrative. My point is that the NT itself doesn't predicate the "ransom" concept on the Eden narrative, if there is a connection (as in Romans 5) it is incidental. My post brought out some pre-Christian Jewish perspectives on sin and the Law that in no way are dependent on any notion of a "fall" or "original sin". And also some pre-Christian abstract allegorical interpretations of the Eden narrative.
Additionally, just the Pauline reference to GoE should lend some weight to the opinion that Paul thought it historical?
Sure, he probably did; it was part of his religious tradition. But that has little to do with the substance of Paul's argument, which is focused on the Law and man's enslavement to sin; his argument (which SHOULD be distinguished from the "ransom" since he does not use the term "ransom" in his epistles; the term only occurs in deutero-Pauline works) works regardless of whether one invokes the Eden narrative.
No where in the Bible does Paul, Jesus, God, Noah, Abraham, or anyone else suggest that GoE is allegorical.
Again, it doesn't matter if the Eden narrative is viewed as allegorical or not, the concept of the ransom in the NT has no necessary connection to the Eden narrative.
Some other non-canonical writers are mentioned above, but most fundamental Christians would not accept them as legitimate in matters of eternal importance.
Are we talking about fundamentalist Christians who would likely view the Eden narrative as historical or Christians who allegoricize the story (which is decidedly non-fundamentalist)? If we are talking about an "allegorical" Eden narrative, what fundamentalists believe is not relevant.
Further - and I speak from a layman's standpoint, if man did not 'fall', but was 'sinful' from some indeterminate point, perhaps since his existence, as the allegorical position suggests, then why, how?
I kind of gave a pre-Christian Jewish example in my last post (I say "kind of" because it is not strictly allegorical, but it has no concept of a "fall" of man). This construes the Eden narrative as paradigmatic for the choices faced by everyone. Adam was merely the first to make such a choice, and he chose not to obey divine law (which for later Jews was embodied in the Torah). But he was not the origin or guilty party for introducing death and sin into the world. He was created from the earth like the other animals were created from the earth, and like "all flesh" he would return to the earth. But unlike the animals, he was created in the "image of God", and so he has the intelligence to understand the difference between good and evil and choose to obey God like the Jews under the Torah (making penance for breaking laws that could be atoned for and avoiding breaking laws that incur a death penalty). Adam would be no different from any other Jew under the Torah. And interestingly, some Jewish or early Christian writings, like the Life of Adam of Eve, do indeed construe Adam and Eve as making penance for their sin in the Garden of Eden; in that story, Adam faithfully kept away from evil for the rest of his life, for which he was blessed with a heavenly reward.
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Deputy Dog
You pray for me, & i'll think for you.
Oh really? Thanks! Remember, I've seen samples of your thinking.
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Psychotic Parrot
Yes you have. And as a christian, you're obviously not going to be impressed by them. I'm bright enough to spot that. Are you bright enough to sense how much of a bigoted idiot i think you are? If you're not, you could always try praying for guidence on the matter.
Why is it that people have the ability to work out that the watchtower is bullshit, but lack the honesty & integrity to use the reasoning that brought them to that conclusion to examine the reliability of the bible as well. It baffles me.
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Deputy Dog
Are you bright enough to sense how much of a bigoted idiot i think you are?
I pray.
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Psychotic Parrot
No, i was right the first time, you're just a wind up. A troll. Piss off.
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snowbird
The WT and the Bible are poles apart, Psychotic Parrot.
C. T. Russell seems to have been obsessed with The Ransom, an irony in the fact that Jesus of Nazareth only mentioned ransom once. (Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45).
By now, you all know what I believe about the Bible.
Sylvia
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mindmelda
I agree Mary, the NT has a very basic teaching of the ransom. The Witnesses trying to cram Genesis and even Isaiah in their to demonstrate some sort of fictional biblical continuity of the Christian idea of the ransom from Genesis to Revelation is why it gets so complicated.
I can even understand Paul doing some of that...he was schooled in the Jewish traditions much more than most disciples and he was sorting through them to determine which ones were useful to Christian thought and which weren't. Most of them were not.
From what I've read, rabbinical teaching does not necessarily include the thought that Adam was "the first man" categorically, or that he was the first human ever, just that he was the first human to be given the choice of serving Yahweh or not, and he didn't make the cut, so God went on to others.
The idea of human perfection is kind of an add on to the Adam and Eve story. We're told the "tree of life" and "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" were both denied them.
Sounds exactly like an allegory for several things about the nature of God's relationship to man, but I don't see the idea of a ransom inherent there. Witnesses are trying to shoehorn their own doctrine in over the story, and make it sound like God made provision for a Messianic ransom from the "fall of man" but that is their intepretation, that the "woman" is the heavenly extension of their own earthly organization, that Christ came to power over it in heaven in 1914, and also that we're awaiting that "paradise" to be restored and everyone will eventually be perfect again.
There is no real evidence that humans were intended to live "forever' which just means an indefinite period of time in Hebrew. The concept of "forever" or "eternity" is a fairly recent one in human thinking anyway. The ancient Hebrews had no concept of those things even in their language, it's not natural to human thought...it's more of a mathematical abstraction, and abstract thinking isn't ever come by automatically. It takes a great deal of progressively complicated thinking. The Arabs didn't even invent algebra which is needed to express time in the modern sense for thousands of years after the period when the first five Bible books were written.
The need for a ransom to restore human kind to perfection that they may not have had anyway? Not very plausible. The idea of man needing an incarnation of God, Christ, to remind them of forgiveness and brotherhood and demonstrate it by selflessly, much more plausible and actually useful for Christianity.
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Deputy Dog
mindmelda
The idea of human perfection is kind of an add on to the Adam and Eve story.
I think people read it into the text because God said his creation was "good". I think that means good for his purposes, not perfect.
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Leolaia
"The Lord himself made man (i.e. Adam) in the beginning, and then left him free to make his own decisions. If you wish, you can keep the commandments, to behave faithfully is within your power. He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes better will be given to him....The Lord fashioned man (i.e. Adam) from the earth, in order to consign him back to it. He gave them so many days' determined time, he gave them authority over everything on the earth. He clothed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image. He filled all living creatures with dread of man, making him master over beasts and birds. He shaped for them a mouth and tongue, eyes and ears, and gave them a heart to think with. He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and revealed to them good and evil. He put his own light in their hearts to show them the magnificence of his works. He set knowledge before them, he endowed them with the law of life. He established an eternal covenant with them, and revealed his judgments to them. Their eyes saw his glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of his voice. He said to them, 'Beware of all wrongdoing,' he gave each a commandment concerning his neighbor.... Their iniquities are not hidden from him, all their sins are before the Lord. One day he will rise and reward them, he will pay back their deeds, but to those who repent he permits return. Return to the Lord and leave sin behind, plead before his face and lessen your offence, come back to the Most High and turn away from all iniquity, and hold in abhorrence all that is foul....Man cannot have everything since the son of man is not immortal. What is brighter than the sun? Yet it suffers eclipse. Flesh and blood think of nothing but evil, God surveys the armies in the lofty sky while all men are nothing more than dust and ashes.... Godless men who have forsaken the Law of God the Most High have a bad outlook. When you were born, you were born to be accursed, and when you die, that curse will be your portion. All that comes from the earth returns to the earth, so too the wicked proceed from curse to destruction.... Do not dread death's sentence, remember those who came before you and those who will come after. This is the sentence passed on all living creatures by the Lord, so why object to what seems good to the Most High? Whether your life lasts ten or a hundred or a thousand years, its length will not be held against you in Sheol" (Sirach 15:14-17, 17:1-31, 41:3-4, 8-10).
In short:
1) Created as mere "flesh and blood" and "dust and ashes" (it is in man's nature), humans can do evil deeds but with the wisdom and "light of God" in their hearts, they can also choose to not do evil. It is each person's responsibility to decide to follow the Law, but those who don't will be accursed.
2) Like "all flesh", like "all living creatures", God has allotted death to man, and this is not a bad thing; "why object to what seems good to the Most High"? Everything has its own time on earth.
This scenario, which interprets Genesis 1-3, is very different from the "Fall of Man" interpretation. Adam (man) was created with the capacity for sin, and with a time limit on his life; he was also created with a capacity for obeying God.