{"id":190,"date":"2009-02-02T09:57:11","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T09:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/02\/comment-of-the-weekend-5.html"},"modified":"2009-02-02T09:57:11","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T09:57:11","slug":"comment-of-the-weekend-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/02\/comment-of-the-weekend-5.html","title":{"rendered":"Comment of the Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott M drops some historical and biblical context on Original Sin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

For that matter, Ethan, I could have pointed to the very first
\ncontroversy that resulted in the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. I
\ndidn’t do so because the Scripture was not yet in the canonized state
\n(or indeed even existant) at that time. But it does have some
\nillustrative use in this discussion even so.<\/p>\n

You see, in that dispute, using Scripture as the sole authority, the
\njudaizers actually had the stronger point. You only have to read
\nGenesis 17 to realize that, especially 17:14. The apostles and early
\nbishops (James seems to have headed the council) on this point and
\nelsewhere radically reinterpreted Scripture to mean something other
\nthan what it sometimes seemed to plainly say in light of who Jesus was,
\nwhat he had done, and what he had taught them. Sola Scriptura was
\ncertainly not their criteria. Their criteria, their lens if you will,
\nwas the revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n

Now, while I feel we must read all Scripture through that same lens,
\nI don’t feel and have never felt free to develop and promulgate novel
\ninterpretations of my own. And you see that consistently beginning with
\nthe apostolic fathers. That’s why, though I have pretty much always
\nrejected the Western notion of original sin, I largely kept my mouth
\nshut until years later when I discovered the Eastern Church had
\nessentially the same understanding I did.<\/p>\n

What we have seen for the past 500 years are people promoting all
\nsorts of novel interpretations (or in some cases ancient heresies
\nrehashed) under the banner of the ‘sole’ authority of Scripture. Many
\nof these are so radically different from each other that they don’t
\neven seem to be describing the same person. I don’t see any way to
\nresolve the God Jonathan Edwards described, for one example, with the
\nGod described by St. Isaac the Syrian.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with ‘original sin’ in my mind? I realize
\nthat may not be obvious. Developing a theory about the nature of the
\nhuman being purely from a novel interpretation of Scripture is
\ndangerous. Attempting to interpret or reinterpret Scripture simply
\nthrough textual or historical analysis is at best a mixed bag. In order
\nto understand what it means to be human, we need to understand what
\nJesus of Nazareth not only revealed about God, but about humanity. He
\nwas not an idea about which we can have varying opinions. He was a
\nperson. As such, though we may all only understand him or know him in
\npart, there is an underlying reality. I would not be willing to concede
\nthat any conception another had of me was equally valid. I am who I am,
\neven if I don’t always know for sure who I am.<\/p>\n

This Western notion of original sin is more platonic in nature than
\nanything that can be strongly identified with the historic Christian
\ninterpretation of Scripture. It’s not even particularly scriptural. The
\nproblems it raises certainly can’t be addressed by anything in
\nScripture. Rather it was a fairly novel and largely ignored idea for
\nthe first thousand years of Christianity. It only found real traction
\nin the West over the past thousand years. It seems to be the sort of
\nproblem that quickly manifests when we abandon the idea that we need to
\ninterpret Scripture in a way that is consistent with the past
\ninterpretation of the Church.<\/p>\n

I feel like I’ve blathered and babbled enough, which probably means I’ve gone on too long. Sorry about that. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott M drops some historical and biblical context on Original Sin: For that matter, Ethan, I could have pointed to the very first controversy that resulted in the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. I didn’t do so because the Scripture was not yet in the canonized state (or indeed even existant) at that time.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment-of-the-day","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nComment of the Weekend - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/02\/comment-of-the-weekend-5.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scott M drops some historical and biblical context on Original Sin: For that matter, Ethan, I could have pointed to the very first controversy that resulted in the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. I didn’t do so because the Scripture was not yet in the canonized state (or indeed even existant) at that time.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/02\/comment-of-the-weekend-5.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-02T09:57:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/02\/comment-of-the-weekend-5.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Comment of the Weekend - The New Christians","og_description":"Scott M drops some historical and biblical context on Original Sin: For that matter, Ethan, I could have pointed to the very first controversy that resulted in the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. 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