Theories about Adam's fall

[ThomasT]

And that’s the proposition I’ve been arguing for.

Although I expect this will be regarded as another straw man, the fact is that Thornwell explicitly rejects your "mystery." In your OP you stated, "The key problem is that Calvinism teaches that any person not acting from external force can only will to do what is in his nature to do." This is the problem as you stated it. Thornwell rejected this teaching. He stated, "It is the determination of the will which fixes our natural dispositions as principles." Again, when he says, "we are not sufficiently acquainted with the mystery of the will," he immediately follows it with the affirmation, "All that we can say is, that it possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature, as an essential element of its being." So your "mystery" is based on a view of human nature which Thornwell rejected.

I started this thread because I’d recently read some commentaries on the Fall by Reformed theologians. One of these commentaries was by RC Sproul. I disagree with some of Sproul’s views, but he argues effectively and I found myself wishing that Sproul could make a case for his views on the Board; I thought the discussion would be illuminating. (I started this thread by saying, “As Sproul has pointed out…”)

But obviously Sproul isn’t available for internet discussion, so I thought I’d try to argue his position as a spur to discussion.

Sproul isn’t convinced that Adam was either free or determined, so this was the position I initially took – a position of freedom and necessity both failing to explain the Fall. The discussion then quickly digressed into how fallen man makes choices, and in order to maintain consistency with Sproul’s views, I took his view (which I don’t accept) that fallen man (not Adam) acts out of necessity (as I understand Sproul; there may be some nuances in his views I’ve missed).

While we argued about necessity, it occurred to me that there was a larger question about Adam’s fall (the “why” question”), which, as I saw it, remained apparently unanswerable regardless of whether we take Sproul’s view (it isn’t clear that Adam was either determined or possessed of true free choice) or the dominant one on this Board (Adam was free – which, again, happens to be my view as well).

Because my defense of necessity was merely a spur to discussion, I thought the discussion could become far more useful if I “conceded” what I believe anyway, which is that Adam was sufficiently free to make moral choices.

And this is where the discussion became circular. After I’d conceded your point about Adam being free, and about his will being mutable, I tried, thinking that we’d settled the freedom/necessity argument, to take a closer look at the “why” problem. But you kept returning to the necessity argument long after I’d abandoned it. (The quote of mine you posted in your last note was from the 19th of March.)

No matter how I tried to focus our attention on the “why” problem, you kept accusing me of defending necessitarianism. At first I thought that this was understandable – I had, after all, been acting as a gadfly. I couldn’t reasonably expect someone who’d been arguing against a “necessitarian” to come to terms, all of a sudden, with the fact that he was now arguing with someone who accepts freedom and mutability and accountability. But after the sixth or seventh attempt of mine to convince you that I’d conceded your main points, it became clear that I wasn’t going to have any success at getting you to believe that you and I were in agreement on the basic questions surrounding the Fall.

Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded. So I’m at a loss as to how to break this discussion out of the eddy it’s trapped in.

But moving on to the latest issue. Mr. R posted a quote from Thornwell in which Thornwell acknowledges a mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall. I suggested that this mystery – why it is that Adam’s will cooperated with his misplaced desires instead of not cooperating with them – was precisely the mystery I’d been trying to discuss.

Your response was that Thornwell rejects the very mystery he identifies. But of course this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Thornwell’s affirmation that Adam’s will “possessed this power of arbitrary self-determination, in defiance of reason, conscience and nature” explains only how Adam’s will behaved the way it did. It doesn’t tell us why Adam chose sin over obedience. Thornwell would have been highly forgetful, or highly illogical, to tell us in one passage that Adam’s “psychological processes” that led to his corruption are “perhaps impossible” to understand and then just a few paragraphs later tell us that these processes can be perfectly understood.

Thornwell is talking about two different things here. On the one hand he’s telling us the bad news, which is that Adam’s choice is shrouded in ultimate mystery, but on the other hand he’s telling us that Adam’s will had the power to act autonomously, and thus that Adam is accountable. He doesn’t pretend for a second to know why Adam used his autonomy to sin; he simply affirms that Adam’s choice wasn’t determined by a defect of “reason, conscience, or nature.” The whole point of Thornwell bringing up reason, conscience, and nature is that he wants us to know that Adam had perfect forms of all three and that his sin has to be blamed on him alone. The mystery of Adam’s sin, Thornwell tells us, exists in parallel with his freedom and mutability.

Thornwell never repudiates his “mystery” statement. You seem to be the only one doing that.

 

[MW]

Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded.

What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!

Even granting your change of opinion mid-discussion, Thornwell's mystery is not your mystery. Thornwell's mystery lies in the will itself, not in the exercise of the will which caused the fall. He rationally accounted for the fall by tracing it back to Adam's self-determining power which was able to act contrary to nature. As soon as one allows the power of the will to act contrary to nature there is no "mystery" in the fact that an upright nature chose to sin. It was in the power of the will to do so.

 

[ThomasT]

Even in your latest post you’ve chosen to represent my current position with a position that has long since been superseded.

What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!

Even granting your change of opinion mid-discussion, Thornwell's mystery is not your mystery. Thornwell's mystery lies in the will itself, not in the exercise of the will which caused the fall. He rationally accounted for the fall by tracing it back to Adam's self-determining power which was able to act contrary to nature. As soon as one allows the power of the will to act contrary to nature there is no "mystery" in the fact that an upright nature chose to sin. It was in the power of the will to do so.

I’m not sure how closely you read my last post, so let me try again to dispel the misconception you seem to be laboring under.

You said: “What you are basically saying is that the straw man comes from your original post and that you later came to see that it wasn't the correct position. Yet you blamed me for the straw man. Poor form!”

And yet this is what I actually did say: “I thought the discussion could become far more useful if I 'conceded' what I believe anyway, which is that Adam was sufficiently free to make moral choices.”

I spelled it out for you in plain English that what I was “conceding” was something I already accepted. If I’d come to see that my position was wrong, I couldn’t have called it something “I believe anyway.” My decision to “concede” your points happened in spite of the fact that I had nothing to concede in terms of my actual beliefs – I was conceding only someone else’s position (Sproul’s), and only to move the thread into a new direction.

To summarize, and hopefully clarify once and for all: I started the thread by speaking (or trying to speak) for Sproul, because his arguments are interesting and I wanted the Board’s reaction to them – not because I accepted them. Then, after I’d heard the counterarguments and thus achieved my initial aim of getting the Board’s reaction, I decided to concede Sproul’s position – not mine.

But in any case, even if you won’t accept my statement that I was speaking for Sproul and not myself, you should be aware that in an intellectual disputation, once a disputant has conceded a position, one does not continue to attack the position that’s been conceded. That’s poor form. And that’s what you did, repeatedly. Even after I stated ad nauseam that I’d conceded your position, you continued to treat me as a proponent of the position I'd been taking on behalf of Sproul. In other words, you made me into a straw man.

As for Thornwell: You acknowledge that Thornwell identifies a mystery in Adam’s will, but then you go on to make a case nobody’s denying. No one’s asserting that Adam didn’t have the power to sin, or that this power came from something other than his ability to act contrary to his nature. We’re not trying to make a mystery out of this. What we’re asking is why Adam used his power in the way he did. You seem to think that a mystery of the will isn’t a real mystery.

 

[MW]

ThomasT, You may recall that my aim throughout has been to dispel the idea that the fall of Adam is a "problem" for Calvinist theology. When you disclaimed necessarianism you did not refer back to the "problem" of the OP. As far as I knew you were still pursuing the same "problem" you had raised in the OP. If you have come to another resolution my objective is accomplished. Thornwell has given a rational cause-effect explanation of the fall, and you seem to accept it. There is no reason to continue to debate a point on which we apparently agree.

 

[ThomasT]

ThomasT, You may recall that my aim throughout has been to dispel the idea that the fall of Adam is a "problem" for Calvinist theology. When you disclaimed necessarianism you did not refer back to the "problem" of the OP. As far as I knew you were still pursuing the same "problem" you had raised in the OP. If you have come to another resolution my objective is accomplished. Thornwell has given a rational cause-effect explanation of the fall, and you seem to accept it. There is no reason to continue to debate a point on which we apparently agree.

We do seem to be in agreement on the main points, but I’m still a little puzzled by your discomfort with the word “mystery” as it applies to Adam. In some of your posts you dismiss both “mystery” and “problem” as unbiblical. For example, on 8 May you wrote: "’Problems’" and ’mysteries’ only arise when the biblical account is not permitted to speak for itself and stand on its own authority.”

And yet isn’t the mystery of Adam’s will a) an actual one and b) a profound one? And doesn’t it create not just a genuine problem (intellectually) but also a problem so difficult that it has to be regarded as “perhaps impossible” (Thornwell) to understand?

I think it’s important to note here that a problem isn’t necessarily the same thing as a fatal flaw. We know that nuclear fusion takes place in the core of the sun, and we know that the process is possible only because of quantum tunneling. We know a great deal about quantum tunneling, but we have no idea why quantum tunneling takes place. This mystery, this problem, doesn’t pose a challenge to the truth of quantum tunneling.

In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.

 

[MW]

In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.

If we have cleared the power of self-determination, and regard that as a sufficient cause for the effect we are describing, then there is nothing specific in Adam's choice which makes it mysterious. Any mystery here is part of the general mystery of life, in which second causes bow to the First Cause. Why do we breathe? Why does a new day dawn? In the end all human explanation has really only described the attributes of things. It never penetrate the essence. Such penetration belongs to the Maker of heaven and earth alone.

Genuine mystery should produce fear and adoration of the great and dreadful Name of God. It only poses problems to those who will not bow to Him.

 

[ThomasT]

In the same way, the mystery at the heart of Adam’s fall poses no necessary threat to Adam’s freedom or accountability. And yet you can’t seem to talk about Adam’s choice to sin as involving a mystery at all.

If we have cleared the power of self-determination, and regard that as a sufficient cause for the effect we are describing, then there is nothing specific in Adam's choice which makes it mysterious. Any mystery here is part of the general mystery of life, in which second causes bow to the First Cause. Why do we breathe? Why does a new day dawn? In the end all human explanation has really only described the attributes of things. It never penetrate the essence. Such penetration belongs to the Maker of heaven and earth alone.

Genuine mystery should produce fear and adoration of the great and dreadful Name of God. It only poses problems to those who will not bow to Him.

I think it’s a mistake to conflate the “mystery of life” with the specific dilemma that confronted Adam in the garden of Eden. The true nature of a proton, the substance we’re all made of, is hidden from us. But the nature of a proton has little, if anything, to do with why Adam chose to commit spiritual suicide. We shouldn’t pretend to have answered the “why” question by pointing to other questions we can’t answer. We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.

 

[MW]

We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.

I don't believe there are brute facts of nature. All things exist by the power and will of God, and facts are knowable because God revealed them. But digressions are best left for new threads. The OP has been asked and answered, so this thread has served its purpose.

 

[ThomasT]

We’re taking a pass on one of the most profound questions we can ask when we simply appeal to the brute fact of nature as an answer for everything.

I don't believe there are brute facts of nature. All things exist by the power and will of God, and facts are knowable because God revealed them. But digressions are best left for new threads. The OP has been asked and answered, so this thread has served its purpose.

I think we’re in agreement on roughly 95% of what we mere mortals can say about an event as remote as Adam’s fall. We seem to be at an impasse on the remaining 5%, but that’s to be expected – disagreements will inevitably arise even when we take Reformed theology as common ground.

Anyway it’s been an illuminating discussion for me, despite the occasional semantic frustrations both of us experienced from reading the other’s posts, and I’m glad you took the trouble to engage as vigorously as you did on this issue; your comments have served as thoughtful and provocative counterpoints to my own way of interpreting Adam's behavior.