/lit/ - Literature

maybe, just maybe, them eating fromt he tree was part of god's plan all along.

>>14639136
>refuted by Guenon, retroactively
Nothing personal, kid.

>>14639136
>applying human reasoning to a transcendent concept

>>14639136
>why doesn't God follow my rules?
So many of these arguments seem to follow a really strange logic of granting (for sake of argument only) one of the attributes of God and showing how it doesn't work if you limit God in every other way.

The answer is obvious. God is the bad guy. Also he isn't omnipotent. If he was he would have taken Adam and Eve out of the garden before they could eat the fruit. Now that we have eaten from the fruit we are almost as powerful as him. All we have to do is attain immortality and God is fucked.

>>14639218
The Biblical God isn't a "transcendent concept". He is an entity with clear, defining features such as personality traits, motives, desires, actions, relationships etc

>>14639139
Then it's not really original sin, it's more like "stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!"

>>14639293
>"He made darkness his secret place" Ps. 18:11
It's an antinomy. God is transcendent in His essence and immanent through His operations or energies.

>>14639343
original sin is a flawed concept based on faulty western translation
1/4

>>14639367
2/4

>>14639371
3/4

>>14639374
4/4

>>14639356
Eastern Orthodox theology is interesting, to be sure, but its a retrospective interpretation of a text that has nothing to do with its actual Sumerian/Near-Eastern mythological origins.

Nothing about religion makes any sense. The only defense is to say ‘well, god is ineffable and you can’t apply human standards to him.’

But that is just admitting we don’t know anything about god, which destroys the credibility of any theologian or scripture.

>>14639136
It amounts to
>I don't like the way God does things so that means God isn't real. Also bawwwwww slavery :(
Hope that helps.

>>14639399
The problem isn’t that what God does is “bad, waah I don’t like it”. The problem is that what God does is incredibly stupid. Can you really bring yourself to believe in such a stupid deity?

>>14639411
God only seems "stupid" if you assume a non-Christian anthropology. Any belief will be stupid in the context of in incompatible paradigm.

>>14639415
*an incompatible

>>14639415
No, he seems stupid from the most plain surface reading of the text. Have you even read the Bible?

>>14639367
Revisionism. The Eastern Orthodox churches, after the combination of Muslim Invasion and Communist Revolution, find their cultural tradition cut off from its source. As they leap from early-modern agrarian societies to the full terror of post-Modern technological society, they are trying to rapidly re-justify their separation from Rome. Indebtedness to God is found explicitly in the New and Old testament, growing not from Original Sin, but from the mere fact that God creates all things, and therefore we cannot genuinely generate anything on our own. And with this, it is not that we owe God anything other than obedience, for, after all, there is nothing else we can give him. However, servile obedience is only the lowest of obedience--that is imperfect contrition. This book misrepresents both the current Catholic teaching and the historical Greek teaching. He is willing to split hairs and wax poetic over the meaning of Greek words, but gives no time to the development and multiplicity of meaning in English words; the Latin word Originem has meaning as both Ancestral and Initial.

>>14639411
Stupid according to what? Christianity is not about giving you a healthy life free of disease. It's not about catering to your modern moral hangups. If you can't understand the role of ceremonial law in preserving the bloodline of Christ, that is your own problem, as is your demeaning of human life ("pair of apes") which are creatures created in the very image of God. You want God to be your little 21st century scientific hug pillow that will tell you about how all of your thoughtless moral views were actually divine truth all along (what a surprise!). The idiot isn't God, it's you.

>>14639426
I don’t even believe in evolution, retard (not the currently accepted version), and I’m neither a materialist, nor subscribe to scientism, and no lol im not one of the guenonian perennialists either. The Biblical worldview is incredibly dumb, though I can appreciate its historical importance. You don’t really believe in it, I’m sure you must be too intelligent for that, you only kid yourself that it isn’t utter nonsense. Stop kidding yourself. You believe in the dumbest possible version of God that human beings have come up with.

>>14639444
If you don't want to state what you actually think (I'm simply going off the OP post) then there's nothing for me to say. I'll be content with my stupidity. It's an honor to be a fool for Christ's sake.

>>14639450
The fool for Christ is a category of Christian culture with a meaningful historical importance. You are not a "fool for Christ". You're a retard posting on 4chan, and I seriously doubt the sincerity of your belief. As for my personal beliefs, I'm open to a lot of ideas, but I'm not pretentious enough to believe that I have found "the ultimate truth". There are so many conceptions of God in history, you have literally chosen one of the dumbest ones. What are you doing bro

>>14639461
That's not what I meant. I'm referring to being mocked.
>You're a retard posting on 4chan, and I seriously doubt the sincerity of your belief.
Cool, and I don't give a fuck about yours. Nice talking to you.

>Taking the story at face value
Laugh at this idiot.

>>14639474
Brother, how can one claim to suffer for God while dwelling in anger? Whenever and wherever you claim to be Christian, you stand for all of us. As you behave towards non-believers, so they will suppose we all behave. If these kinds of conversations leave you flustered and angry, and cursing--saying Raca--do you think that is good witness, or bad witness?

>>14639422
Shifting goal posts. That's a short excerpt, the author doesn't deny that creation implies indebtedness, he is only dealing with original sin, which he shows is not in the original.

>>14639136
>gives humans free will
>unable to comprehend why placing the tree in some impossible place to reach isn't a brilliant idea
>unable to comprehend the simplest of all books in the bible

>>14639608
>isn't able to understand that "Elohim" is plural
>isn't able to understand that the serpent's rebellion against the Elohim is just
>isn't able to understand that the Elohim are not all powerful and that man will one day overthrow their tyrannical rule
>literally unable to comprehend one of the simplest of all books in the bible

>>14639495
I get the sense that you didn't read my post. Typical of legalism, the author makes prolonged and belabored effort to explain the importance of one subtly of language, but conveniently skips over ways of interpreting other words which add substantive meaning.

It is agreed upon by East and West that first Eve sinned, then Adam. Adam as man bears culpability for himself, and also for Eve, whereas Eve bears it only for herself, but bears it also for tempting Adam. So it is agreed on by all that sin entered into the world by Adam. That is, sin was not in the world, it is now in the world, and Adam is he who wrought it. Therefore, though each man is repsonsible for his own will and choices, sin itself (not as an individual act, but as a class or category or type of act) came to us by Adam. The immediate consequence of sin is death, which is not only a final act, but is also a continual process of deterioration and degeneration. By the process of generation, those born of Adam are of Adam in body and spirit meaning they too bear the consequence of Adam's sin, for death damages human nature itself. This damage to human nature all but ensures that each man will sin of his own accord. By sinning, Adam incurred sin on the rest of humanity. We do not suffer death as punishment for his sin, but as a consequence of our own natures.

All this is agreed upon between East and West. Augustine and Jerome were well before the schism, and there has been no contention over this doctrine until very recently. It seems to only have become a point of contention after Rome dogmatized the immaculate conception--which is itself accepted by many Orthodox theologians. The word Original and Ancestral share essential meaning.

What's more, most of the "western" positions claimed by this author do not come form any Catholic theologian and have never been put forward by Rome. Rather, they are in all cases, secular interpretations rejected by the Church and developed primary in the essentially atheist Enlightenment movement.

Lastly, his understanding of substitutional culpability is seriously flawed, and seems to ignore the entire principle and operation of Mosaic law.

>>14639136
>would he derive his entire conscious to "testing"
Why are you posting schizoid ESL ramblings?

>>14639382
Source?

>>14639635
/lit/ isn't ready for that level of redpill
>>14639619
All he is saying is that *moral culpability* is not inherited, according to the text, not that people don't inherit the capacity to commit sin. Are you disagreeing with that? If so then address his reading of the text.

>>14639642
Or rather, to rephrase, that East and West understood it differently based on whether moral culpability is inheritable or not. He is not saying that one view is "correct" and the other "incorrect" theologically. He is just showing the way it is interpreted by both and why the arrived at those interpretations. He is not saying which is right theologically, which would be silly given that he considers Abrahamic religion in general to be pernicious.

>>14639618
>serpent
>just
More like JUST when he gets owned in revelations lmao

>>14639702
Then he becomes a tragic figure. Tragedy is the highest form of art yet devised by man. Better to fail in the attempt to overthrow a tyrant than to bow obsequiously before him. Anyway, if there is a chance we could win we should take it. Don't be a coward.

>>14639714
>tyrant
>guys here's eternal life, food, whatever
SuCH a TYraNT

>>14639739
>implying he can actually cash in on those promises
you've never heard of a scam before? lmao imagine believing yaweh

>>14639205
getting a bit boring now anon

>>14639642
>>14639650
Yes, all he is doing is mischaracterizing traditional Eastern and Western theology by selectively nitpicking translations, without any regard for historical commentaries on those translations.

>>14640030
The guy is a Phd in Patristics from Oxford, I think he is well aware of traditional commentary. What are your qualifications exactly?

>>14639136
>Determines whether or not it chews grass and has its hoof split.
I dunno, Jews are still around today and even doing pretty well all things considered so even if it seems odd apparently it works.

>Why would God place the tree of knowledge in the middle of Eden
What's particularly stupid about this is that he doesn't ask why there's a tree at all. Perhaps the answer to that question would illuminate his original, retarded query.

>What if overpopulation
lol what.

>muh slavery
Apparently slavery isn't a sin.

>>14640720
>asking an anonymous imageboard poster to display his credentials
Maybe you would be better off on a site with individual attribution, like reddit.

>>14639739
but...but I have to admit I'm not perfect!

>>14640720
So let's get this straight--you want to take the unsubstantiated opinion of a modern, humanist theologian over the millenia-and-a-half of actual Church theologians from both sides of the East-West divide? If you want to appeal to authority, what authority does he have? Oxford does not belong to any orthodox church. They do not grant degrees based on doctrinal orthodoxy. They have no monetary interest in orthodoxy. As a secular research theologian, he is actually incentivized away from doctrinal support. How can theologians have been in agreement from John Cassian until Vatican II, but suddenly a heterodox theologian independently discovers that they've never been in agreement? What's more, his analysis completely ignores the spiritual element of Original Sin, which is its primary component, and instead argues the point as an issue of broken moral culpability which borrows more from contemporary legal theory than any genuine theology.

>>14640803
It was obviously a rhetorical question, but I suppose your sarcastic response is also purely rhetorical. It appears we are at an impasse.

>>14640831
>What's more, his analysis completely ignores the spiritual element of Original Sin
He ignores it because it’s irrelevant to his point. He isn’t making a point about “correct theology” but about how a particular passage was commonly interpreted in two respective societies. I’ve already pointed that out but you keep trying to make this about “the ultimate truth of theology” or something, which is a totally separate issue.

>>14640882
Your post was that Original Sin was a faulty concept based on a poor translation. You posted four pages of a book only you have read, with no author or title visible. Now you want to say that the theological agreement between East and West on the issue of original sin is irrelevant to whether Original Sin is a flawed concept, as compared to Ancestral Sin, ignoring the plain fact that Original and Ancestral share a meaning, both are themselves translations, and the Latin and Greek translations have been held as the same since as long as the theological concept has existed? What's more, at no point does he make a sociological argument. Nowhere does he put forward an examination of the folk understanding or even an aristocratic school of thought; this all appears to lead into an examination of the development of corporate law, and yet he never makes a clean connection between the two. If you don't understand my counter-argument, ask questions instead of hand-waving it away.