Mark

Cheryl,

Thanks for your answers. A few more comments.

1. First off- good on you for correcting my wrong biblical quote, sorry about that. However I can’t see in Num 14 how the text is saying that the generations are evil. Likewise I can’t see how 2 Kings is relating to the whole of Israel. It specifically calls into view Menassah. Not only that, if your interpretation would be to work you would have to say that every single person in Israel was apostate. There is no room in your theology to understand how the righteous amongst the nation still suffered because of the majority. Lamentations I think makes this clear. There were people in Israel who were faithful to the covenant, althought the majority (and the kings) were not. The same can be seen with Elijah, when God reserves 7000 for himself who do not bow the knee to Baal. To me the covenant was communial. The nation as a whole was to abide by it- especially the leaders (kings). When they were unfaithful, the nation suffered for that sin, even those who were righteous (though few). This same paradigm seems consistent with what the bible teaches about generational sin. Although person b is not responsible for person a’s sin, he/she may still suffer the consequences of it. Your thoughts?
2. I am glad you are not supporting universalism. It appears we again agree on this. Frankly I am astounded that you even have to defend the doctrine of original sin. Maybe that is a cultural thing in Canada/US. It seems pretty clear to me in the bible the nature of our depravity. Not only that Pelagianism was wiped out early on as heretical teaching by the church. It appears however that it still runs rampid. I applaud you for defending the bible here.
   3. About the incarnation. First I must confess that I believe that this doctrine is probably the hardest to understand, even above the Trinity. How Jesus could leave glory, humble himself to earth and be both fully God and fully man is very difficult to understand, let alone explain. However I don’t see what you have said as solving the difficulty. You seemed to imply that not accepting your approach diminishes Jesus humanity- I don’t think it does. Jesus is fully human because he humbled himself to become human. The bible declares that he was tempted in everyway like us, so he was fully human, yet he withheld temptation. The reason I believe he withheld was because he was fully God. God cannot sin therefore Jesus could not have sinned, even though he was tempted to sin because of his humanity (this is where the incarnation gets messy). Your view makes it theoretically possible that Jesus could have sinned and I appreciate what you are saying because you are trying to understand how his humanity worked. But to imply that Jesus could have sinned is to deny that he was fully God, not able to sin. It also implies that God is able to sin theoretically and that he is changeable, both of which the bible denies. So I must protest again that emphasising this stuff about sin natures doesn’t solve any issues. I think it probably creates more. Not only that, but the bible is silent on this issue. It never says that Jesus was born of a virgin because only Mary did not pass on a corrupted nature. You are basically speculating on the issue. But I can see why you so it, because you need the incarnation to support your understanding of the banishment and sin, but I don’t think it works.
3. Finally I would just like to point out how you understand the seed of the woman in Gen 3. you said “It was God who said that the seed of the woman would defeat the serpent.” Now I don’t think this is actually correct. The verse in Gen does not say that the seed of the woman would ‘crush’ the head of the serpent. The NIV is unhelpful here. The Hebrew uses the exact same word for the serpent and the woman, namely the serpent’s seed will bruise the heel of the woman’s seed, and the woman’s seed would bruise the head of the serpents seed. Nothing in this verse indicates that the woman’s seed would be victorious or crush the serpent. All this protoevangelium stuff is read back into the verse from Christian heritage. I think the point of the verse is to show the enmity between the two offspring, the corruption of relationships because of sin, firstly between God and people, then between people and people and finally between people and animals. To say that one is victorious over the other is eisegesis not exegesis.
   5. That said I am not saying that Jesus did not conquer over Satan, I believe that to be true, but the specific verse in Gen 3 grammatically does not say this, it’s read into the verse. Jesus conquering over Satan is established from other passages not Gen 3.