One of my students asked me a few weeks ago (during my Bible lesson I was expounding on the Creation-Fall-Redemption historical paradigm), "Teacher, if Adam and Eve had not sinned, would we be living in perfection now?"
And then about a week after that (Mrs. Heidi) said (while a few of us women were complaining about menstruation and blaming Eve), "Oh, come on, if she and Adam hadn't sinned, someone else would have!"
And it made me wonder...a la Perelandra...if Adam and Eve had not sinned, would it have been an option for any one of us? Would we all have been tempted as Adam and Eve were, or was that just an option for Adam and Eve? AND if someone had sinned, would there then be 2 'classes' of people: the Perfect and the Sinful?
(In Perelandra, Lewis toys with the idea that Adam and Eve had a testing period and that eventually it would have ended if only they had held out. Because who can stand up to demonic testing forever? Even Jesus only had to stand up to Satan three times in the desert after 40 days of fasting.)
::Disclaimer:: know that we are living in the Best of All Possible Worlds, because we believe that God is omnipotent and all-knowing and not sadistically out to get us. So I'm not asking because I am untrusting of God. I am asking because I wonder about 'what would have happened' (or what we think 'would have happened') if Eve and Adam had not sinned. So if you intend to comment, chiding me for being untrusting, then don't bother commenting. Answer the question, ok?
Posted by at September 28, 2003 04:00 PM | TrackBackAdam and Eve could not have not sinned. God is not the author of sin but he is absolutely sovereign. It is a part of his eternal plan that Adam and Eve sinned.
John Calvin wrote: ". . . whence does it happen that Adam's fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? . . . The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because HE SO ORDAINED BY HIS DECREE . . . God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also METED IT OUT IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS OWN DECISION."
I'm not supporting Supralapsarianism though (even if it sounds like I am), but I don't think we can ever fully understand till glorification.
I really enjoy this question you raise... pretty heavy stuff for a blog entry. Just felt like responding :)
Posted by: Van Hammersly at September 29, 2003 07:28 AMThe WCF VII.2 reads, "The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience." The next section, which speaks of those that are ordained unto life, makes it clear that the life promised here is eternal, the same kind that believers have in heaven through Christ. The important phrase here is, "and in him to his posterity." All of Adam's descendants would have been given this life had he kept the conditions of the covenant. To answer the question, "Would sin have been an option for any one of us had Adam not sinned?" consider another question, "Will sin be an option for any one of us in heaven?"
Posted by: Kevin at September 28, 2003 09:14 PM