Biff the unclean

Oooooh, Kevin the heretic. No original sin means no need for a saviour. Jesus, a.k.a. "the Second Adam, becomes superfluous.
Are you sure that you don't want to rethink this? Take time to thumb through a copy of Augustine perhaps.

spurly

You are jumping to conclusions. No origingal sin does not equate to no need for a Savior. Far from it.

We all still need a Savior because we all still choose, at one point or another, to sin. It is not something that is passed to us from our anscestors, it is a choice that we make.

By the way - there are a lot of Christians out there who do not buy the traditional original sin theology. We believe that original sin is a misinterpretation of the word of God.

We were born with a free will. And that free will chooses to do things that go against the nature of God - but we were not born sinners. We only become sinners when we sin.

Kevin

christ-on-a-stick

Is this an assertion that you can back up (that we ALL still choose to sin?)

Seems to me that you can decide to define sin however you want to make sure that everybody gets trapped under that blanket.

Can you give us an exhaustive list of sins and then show that every human throughout time has committed one of them?

If you can't (logistically impossible I understand) then what makes you SO SURE that a good number of people haven't? I suspect that you still believe to an extent that we have a "sin nature" or "inclination to sin" as part of being human.... be honest now!!!

After all, if you don't think that there is a part of us that is naturally inclined to "sin", then *what causes you to assert that everybody chooses to sin?*

Don't forget, tell the truth!

Jamie_L

Spurly,

But why do we sin? Not just because we have free will. But because certain desires drive us to exercise that free will to choose evil. Whence come those desires?

Imagine: a human with no desire for good or evil, but free will. Such a person has no preference for one choice over another. His decisions will be arbitrary. He'll effectively flip a coin each time he has a choice.

Now, if God wants us to make non-arbitrary decisions, we must have desires. I assume we can safely assume God doesn't want us making arbitrary decisions about good and evil, so when God makes us, he must give us desires. He can give us only desires to do good. Only desires to do evil. Or some combination.

Now, by your arguement, if God gives us only desires to do good, then we will have no free will. So, to give us free will, God must give us desires to do evil.

But this would be quite bothersome - and would amount to a kind of original sin. A God who gives us desires to do evil, and then blames and punishes us when we do in fact to evil, would be disturbing to say the least.

So, again, I say there is a problem with this whole Free Will = Evil idea. If desire to do good all the time denies free will, then we are left with the conclusion that God creates people who are prone to sin, and then punishes them when they do sin.

Still doesn't make sense to me.

Jamie

spurly

Jamie,

Thanks for the questions. I don't have a lot of time to answer them right now, but I thought I would make one quick comment until I can get back later tonight.

All the desires that God gave us in the beginning were good desires. They were holy desires. Where does the desire to do evil come from then? Like in the garden, Satan takes good desires and twists them. He perverts them, and makes a good desire evil.

As for the idea of how do I know that everyone has sinned. Because that's what God has revealed to me. He has never lied to me before, why would I think he would start now. If you want to check it out look at Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God".

More to come after our youth meeting tonight. (If I can).

Kevin

spurly

I try to do that all the time.

Kevin

winstonjen

And god was the one who LET Satan do this, I presume? Therefore, god WANTED them to be corrupted. How then does god escape blame?

Remember to keep the priests away from the little children.

long winded fool

We all still need a Savior because we all still choose, at one point or another, to sin. It is not something that is passed to us from our anscestors, it is a choice that we make.

If we are not born sinners, but become sinners when we choose to do our first evil act, then it is not the case that "all have sinned," thus directly contradicting the Bible. What sin does the fetus commit inside the womb that can't be considered "original sin?" What sin can a fetus choose to commit? If the aborted fetus dies without ever commiting a voluntary sin, is it any less sinless than Jesus Christ? If any human being dies before he or she has the chance to commit a sin, can we assume that they were as sinless as Jesus? If not, then there must be some kind of "original sin" that everyone carries from conception. If some human beings besides Jesus are sinless, then the Bible is not the authority that you are referring to.

Biff the unclean

It is interesting though how Christians are more than happy to discard parts of the religion that they don't like. Even major pieces, in this case "Original Sin". And then they add parts that they do like, in this case "Free Will" and "Love Relationship with God." And even when they do all this modification it never occurs to them that they have changed Christianity into something that it wasn't. They will happily argue with you that their own invention is the true religion.

Radorth

The skeptics have some points here IMO. The simple assumption that we can all choose or not choose to sin is problematic, and contradicts what the Bible is saying in toto. One does not have much of a choice at least until s/he is given the "new nature" and has developed a sensitivity to what is pleasing to God in fact. In the end, it is only grace that saves anyone. We can only "will to do his will." He must do the rest.

As Nee put it, "God knows I am the incarnation of weakness. The trouble is I do not know it."

One of the great things about being a Christian IMO is that I can make choices NOT TO DO things I formerly could not resist, freeing me to do other more meaningful and efficacious things. Of course I still can't resist mocking a few helpless hypocrites here and there, but God hasn't given up an me yet.

(Hey at least I've advanced to calling them "fellow hypocrites").

Rad