Romans 5:12, Commentary (now with more Genesis!)
Jul 29th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5: Intro, 1-11, 12, 12-14, 15, 16-21, Summary ]
Romans 5:12-21 is where people usually point for support of the Doctrine of Original Sin specifically, so that’s what I have to deal with today. Except that explaining 5:12 is going to take too much space. I’m going to, in essence, have to explain the first three chapters of Genesis.
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12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.
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5:12 — The image here is that sin is a kind of deadly infection that, once it’s let into a place, (eventually) infects and kills everyone. The connection of sin and death goes back to Genesis 2:16-17. There, God tells Adam that if he eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he’ll die. The text of Genesis 1-3 gives us the reason for this, without ever explicitly saying it. You have to pay attention to what the story is showing you/teaching you.
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I. Genesis 1, and Delegating Responsibility
In Genesis 1, God engages in a three-aspect process of (1) creating things, (2) seeing that things are good, and (3) turning over His responsibilities to what He creates. For example, God creates the universe, light, day, night, the earth, sea, and sky all by Himself. But when it comes time to create plants and animals, He employs the earth and sea as a partner — delegating part of the responsibility for creation to them. Then, he delegates the responsibility for the further creation of plants and animals to the plants (in cooperation with the earth) and animals (in cooperation with the plants) themselves. They are to reproduce themselves
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Also, after taking care of the Day/Night cycle Himself (continually dividing and re-dividing the light from the darkness) for the first three days, God turns over that responsibility to the Lights (Sun and Moon, specifically) on Day Four. And after creating the humans on Day Six, God turns over all the rest of His responsibilities to them. They must continue God’s work through their “dominion,” just as the Lights continued God’s work by “ruling” over day and night. To do this, however, they will need to learn to recognize goodness, just like God can. They must learn to imitate God in seeing good.
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II. Genesis 1-2, and Teaching the Humans to See Good
So, God immediately starts to teach them to see good. God begins with seeing good in the realm of food (Genesis 1:29-30), even telling them that they can watch the animals if they forget which food is good to eat. Then, Genesis 2 shows us that God also taught them to see good in the realm of relationships. Having delegated the task of naming to the humans, God teaches them to distinguish between animal and human companions (so that they can see that their primary need is for the latter, not the former).
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This is the only responsibility God has kept for Himself: teaching the humans to be proper images of God, by teaching them how to recognize good in more and more areas of life. Teaching the humans to see good in more and more areas of life is part of God’s making them in His image. They are still being created, because God is still making them more and more like Himself. That is, God was teaching them how to be like God, by teaching them the knowledge of good and evil. They were supposed to want to be like God (they were made to be images of God!) and they were supposed to gain the ability to recognize good (and thus to be able to distinguish it from neutral and bad).
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III. Genesis 3, “The Tree,” and Trying to Take Over Teaching
However, if they were to follow the Serpent’s advice and try to teach themselves the knowledge of good and evil, rather than allowing God to teach it to them, they would be putting themselves in God’s place. They would, in trying to become like God (finally having the ability to see good in all areas of life), actually be trying to be God, by playing the one role God hadn’t delegated to them along with all the other responsibilities.
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The problem with this is isn’t that God would be angry at them, or jealous that they could teach themselves. The problem with this is that an image can’t be the thing it is an image of. It’s an ontological issue (that is, it simply has to do with the kind of thing that humans are), not a judicial or emotional one (that is, it has nothing to do with an arbitrary decree or whim or feeling that God has about the situation). Humans are images of God, and therefore can’t be God. If they were to “step behind themselves,” as it were, trying to put themselves into the place of the thing they are images of, they would go blank. They would cease to be images.
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IV. Images Can’t Be Images of Themselves
Imagine what an image that was an image of itself would look like. A picture that had put itself in the place of the thing it was a picture of — and thereby become a picture of itself — would be a picture of nothing. An image that is an image of itself, is an image of an image of an image of itself, which is an image of an image of an image of an image of itself, which is. . . . You get the picture. An image that puts itself in the place of that-of-which-it-is-an-image, becomes an image of an image of an image of an image . . . on to infinity. In other words, it becomes an image of nothing. It is empty, being just a series of reflections of empty reflections of empty reflections.
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And an image of nothing isn’t an image. An image that is an image of itself isn’t an image at all. In the process of trying to become the thing it is the image of, it eliminates — kills — itself. Thus, Adam and Eve committed suicide by trying to teach themselves how to see good. In attempting to become better images of the “Thing” they were images of — by trying to improve their ability to see good — they were actually trying to teach themselves. They were trying to play the role of that-of-which-they-were-images. And, thus, they ceased to be images. They stopped being what they were. They expired, faded. They cut off their “image-of” connection to God; they ceased to be images of Him, by trying to be Him.
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V. Genesis 3, “The Curse,” and the Consequences of Cutting Off the Connection with God
Without their connection to God, their bodies began to fall apart (just like a field of wheat does when the irrigation system that connects it to its water source is shut down). Since they had ceased to be images — representations — of God, they ceased to make God present (to re-present God) to themselves and to the world. God had made them His representatives (representations, images, pictures) in the Universe, and they had ceased to perform that function. They shut God’s presence not only out of themselves, but out of the world. They were the irrigation system, the pipes through which God’s presence was to flow into the world (they were meant to represent God by being representations, images of God). And thus they not only dried up, but so did the world.
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It was an understandable mistake — the kind you could make with the best of intentions — and that’s why God warned them against it. And after they make the mistake, God immediately steps back into the role of teacher. (If I understand correctly, the translations of Genesis 3:16 are all seriously flawed, inserting an “I will” where there is none, and translating the word for “turning” as some kind of sexual “desire.” See Hard Sayings of the Bible.) God begins to prepare them for the kind of lives they are going to have to live, now that they and their world are starting to fall apart. It’s going to be more difficult to have and deal with children, God tells Eve. And it’s going to be more difficult to deal with Adam. Then, God tells Adam that it’s going to be more difficult to deal with the ground and cultivate food crops. (I.e., it’s going to be more difficult for him to provide for his wife and children.)
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When you shut down the irrigation system that keeps everything healthy and running properly, this is what happens. And God wants them to be as prepared as possible. So God warns them ahead of time of what they’ll have to face. God doesn’t want them to be taken by surprise. God isn’t cursing them. God is not imposing these penalties on them as punishment for what they have done. God is just pointing out the natural, automatic, logical, physical, necessary consequences of what they have done — given the kind of beings they are, and their place in the system of the world.
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VI. Back to Paul and Romans
So, now you can see why Paul would describe Adam’s sin as a kind of “opening the door to the disease of sin and death.” Although, I would have put it the other way round: Adam’s sin was a shutting the door on God, shutting the life-giving/sustaining presence of God out of the Universe. Now, every person is born into a world that has been fundamentally cut off from God. And then, every person cuts him- or herself off from God by sinning (by, in some way or other, putting him- or herself in God’s place, and thus trying to be that-of-which-he/she-is-an-image). Thus, everyone is born into a world that is dying — a world from which God has been excluded — and everyone commits “spiritual suicide” (which leads to their physical decay, over time) themselves.
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Is Paul really hammering this, “We’re all in the same spot, so we shouldn’t divide ourselves into factions” point or what?!
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[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5: Intro, 1-11, 12, 12-14, 15, 16-21, Summary ]
