Some questions for christians

Great Debates
1

  1. Given Genisis 1:1, it is assumed that that point is the “start”. 7-day creation arguements aside, when did God create the angels? Did God create the angels? When did Lucifer fall from heaven?

  2. I am under the impression that sin is caused from temptation, and satan is the cause of the temptation. Can man be sinful without temptation? Can man commit sin without satan in the equation?

  3. After all the events in Revelations, all the faithful live eternally with God on the “new earth”. Satan is gone at this point. Satan was able to “self-generate” temptation within his own being. Could that happen again? Is there any possibility of the events in the bible going “full circle”? I don’t think this would violate anything in the bible. If people are unable to generate sin within themselves, how was Lucifer able to?

I’m asking these out of curiousity. It doesn’t shake my faith a bit. I just find it interesting.

Thank you all.

2

God go with you in your search for answers, High Deity. It’s mostly all piddly shit to me, but I would like to comment on sin. Sin is born of a cold and loveless heart. Love is the conduit through which God’s goodness flows. Sin is the rejection of God’s love.

3

Whereas I believe that love is an emotion, and “sin” is the breaking of laws supposedly given to humans from a higher supernatural power. Of course, this is only my personal opinion, folks.

  1. Given that the Bible doesn’t get into the creation of angels or the timetable for the fall of Satan(Lucifer being a synonym for Satan is highly questionable), the most we have to work with are the non-Biblical fables handed down through the centuries, most of which not being part of official church canon.

  2. It is a part of some(but not all) church canon that Man is born sinful-a sort of inheritance from Adam. How some churches can say that the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory and yet keep the part about original sin is beyond me, however.

3.There are large disagreements on this point. Some say that we will have free will, but that because Satan(and by extension, sin) is banished, we will no longer want to sin. Of course, the question comes up-Is it free will if all choices but one have been denied you?

While I admit that I am not a Christian, these are things that have been brought up in the churches(Episcopalian, Nazarine, Baptist) I was made to attend during my childhood.
2.

4

An impressive post, Czar! :slight_smile: Thank you.

5

And as a side question, why did an omniscient God create a creature which He knew would eventually become Satan in the first place?

6

Well, from several perspectives, the myth (I think the allegory aspect is minor) is that man is sinful from the beginning. It is not a statement (in this view) that we inherited a “stain on the soul” from Adam. It is a statement that human nature, beginning with the first humans, has always been inclined toward sin.

I dunno. We might not be that far apart in our views, in the long run, but I would not characterize sin in that way.
My experience of sin is the choosing of a lesser and immediate good at the expense of the greater good. A great deal of sin actually originates in love–poorly understood or shortsighted, but still love, with nothing cold about it. I have never set out with the intention to spurn God’s love, but I have certainly sinned. (Sure, there are actions of anger that are clearly against God’s will, but I have far more examples of choosing something that I consider “harmless” out of selfishness, only to later recognize that I had blinded myself to the harm out of an immediate desire.)

7

Tom wrote:

Love is not shortsighted.

You spurned His love every time you have sinned. God is utterly holy. Love is the conduit of His goodness. Sin does not exist where His love dwells.

8

Nice job, Czarcasm! (And that comment is not czarcastic!) That is about as cogent an answer from a traditional Christian perspective as I think possible.

That said, I do have some comments on your introductory paragraph, and I hasten to add that they are IMHO, just as yours were, shared for mutual understanding, not to “prove you wrong” or any such thing.

In my mind, love in the Christian context – agapé or caritas – is the ongoing effort of the individual to behave towards another as he understands Christ would, the carrying out of the command to “love others as oneself.” It finds its roots in the emotion of love, but flowers from that as an ongoing act of will to treat others with kindness, compassion, gentle correction where needed, and in general acting out of the Golden Rule (as amended by discussion* here a few years ago, that is).

And for me, “sin” is the inevitable falling short of the goal I accept as having been set for me by God the Son of “being perfect as My Father in Heaven is perfect,” “loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” “loving your neighbor as yourself,” “giving thanks in all things,” “forgiving as you would wish to be forgiven,” and a number of similar ideal-level statements. My aspiration is to carry these out as fully as I can, the Lord being my help; inevitably I fall short, and repent of that. Individual “sins” are specific instances where I, being human, fall short of that ideal behavior.

Does that help clarify where I’ve been coming from any better?

  • We got into a long discussion on this, which in sum amounted to “Treat others as they would wish to be treated if they understood all things about themselves,” after excursions into necessary discipline of children and whether a masochist beating others as he would wish to be beaten is truly following the Golden Rule ;),
9

Is it then possible to sin against oneself without sinning against God, and if not, what is the difference, Polycarp?
BTW, thank you for the distinction between types of “love”. Perhaps for discussions of this sort it might be better not to use the word “love” without first saying which type one is refering to.
Libertarian, imho it is not possible to spurn without the deliberate intention to do so. Perhaps there is a better word to use for such a situation?

10

Love is not shortsighted.

Of course not. It’s some PEOPLE that love that are shortsighted. :slight_smile:

1) Given Genisis 1:1, it is assumed that that point is the “start”. 7-day creation arguements aside, when did God create the angels? Did God create the angels? When did Lucifer fall from heaven?

Well, there’s considerable question as to whether God is even bound by linear time, so when God created angels may not be a meaningful question, and when Lucifer fell from Heaven would depend more on where he hit.

2) I am under the impression that sin is caused from temptation, and satan is the cause of the temptation. Can man be sinful without temptation? Can man commit sin without satan in the equation?

I don’t think satan is the cause of all temptation. If he could sin without a temptor, why shouldn’t we be able to? I tend to lean towards his just screwing with the big things, i.e. the fall, the temptation of Christ, and such. Whether that’s his choice or limitations placed on him would be up for debate, of course. Satan just likes hurting God, and the best way to do that is to hurt us. It’s like wanting to hurt Superman, so you kidnap Lois Lane. (Or Clark Kent on one occasion, which made for a rather unique ep.)

3) After all the events in Revelations, all the faithful live eternally with God on the “new earth”. Satan is gone at this point. Satan was able to “self-generate” temptation within his own being. Could that happen again? Is there any possibility of the events in the bible going “full circle”? I don’t think this would violate anything in the bible. If people are unable to generate sin within themselves, how was Lucifer able to?

I’m not sure that we’ll be perfect in all our actions once Christ returns, but I do think that once he does, it won’t matter. The ones that’ll be there will be the ones that know of sin, and will ask forgiveness if they should fail. Why would the forgiveness cease once He returned?

Of course, you do have the whole rebellion thing at the end of the millenial reign, but that’s something else entirely. :slight_smile:

11

Czar wrote:

How about “disregard”, “fail to call upon”, or “neglect”?

12

How about “inadvertently neglect”? There is still the matter of deliberate intention implied with those words without such a clarification.

13

If you take the 7 day creation literally, then you have to assume that angels were created before this world was. The fall could have happened any time before Adam and Eve were tempted (of course, I’ve heard that the snake may not have been Lucifer, but, whatever.)
If you don’t take the creation story literally, then the time that angels came into existence could be any time before humans roamed the face of the Earth, since angels would need to be around before people could talk about them, right?

Sin isn’t necessarily caused by temptation. You could just sin on a whim, with no temptation around. And yes, man can sin on his own. After all, who was around to tempt Satan?

Of course, some believe that the events in Revelations were actually a coded message about what was going on at the time it was written, with colorful images and poetic imagery used to get it passed the Roman censors.
And yes, as long as we have free will, it seems likely that people will always sin.
As for a time when God lives among us, how he can wipe out sin, once and for all, is beyond me. Unless he takes away our free will of course. Or, if he makes nothing sinful any more. I don’t know…

14
  1. “Angels” are not mentioned during the"seven days" of Genesis, though some believe that making man in “our” image–the plural–suggests a Heavenly Court. Even the “angel” traditionally put at the gates of Eden is not what most people mean by an angel, but is rather a winged sphinxlike creature of the sort depicted on the Ark of the Covenant–not a humanoid “messenger”. (The flaming sword is not held by the creature, BTW.)

So all we know is that God at some point created messengers for himself. If they are time-transcendent, they could be created in the future and travel back to ANY time. By the way, angels need not be entirely independent beings–they might be “parts” of God, as our limbs are part of our bodies.

  1. AFAIK, the word translated “sin” signifies a “falling-short” or “missing of the mark.” It is not, necessarily, the same thing as what is denoted as an abomination, or even an “offense.” Whether perfected beings could be such as would never make an error of any sort–and yet would still be “themselves”–well, the controversy fills libraries.

  2. The first woman was tempted by the clever serpent (who also spoke with forked tongue!), not necessarily by “Satan”. Nor is the “Lucifer” who fell from Heaven in some apocryphal works the same, necessarily, as the “satan” (adversary) who appears in Job, or who tempts Jesus in the desert. About all you can conclude from all this is that the first act of human disobedience was solicited by a nonhuman, but sub-supernatural, agent; and that God makes use of an adversarial-style system now and then.

15

Well, I enjoyed our meeting of the minds while it lasted, but you will surely abandon me at this point. :wink:

Sin is meaningful only in the context of morality, and morality is meaningful only in the context of free moral agency. Thus, moral decisions are deliberate. When I sin, I have deliberately chosen to cut God off — to sever His love (His conduit of goodness). If my sins were inadvertent, then God could not ethically hold me to account for them, nor would forgiving them be appropriate.

16

I believe intent has a lot of do with it. If an individual drinks too much (sin) and then runs into another car while driving and kills someone (sin) then the second sin was unintentional, but still wrong. In reading “life reviews” unintentional sin was less painful than the intentional kind.

LOve
Leroy

17

Libertarian, you surely are not contending that when people “sin” they are purposefully intending to turn away from or spurn God? This may be how you feel when you break one of the religious rules that count as sins in your understanding of the Bible, but I doubt that very many people put that much conscious thought into it. I still contend it is possible for religious people to sin without the thought of spurning God entering their minds.

18

—Libertarian, you surely are not contending that when people “sin” they are purposefully intending to turn away from or spurn God?—

He should speak for himself, but perhaps it doesn’t matter that they call it “God”? Simply that they are simply failing to love?

19

God is Love, therefore failing to love is a deliberate sin?!?

20

Satan is a very odd beast, particularly in the context of the thing called free will. If we have this thing free will, and it’s of ultimate concern of God to protect, then I don’t see how Satan can possibly be of any real concern. His actions, no matter how devious, cannot ever “tip-the-balance” in someone’s ultimate fate IF the justice of the system is ensured by God (that is, it has to be that, without Satan, the person would have ended up choosing whatever they chose to get them to their ultimate end anyway).