Good morning.
- On the consensus of skeptics regarding global warming neatly summarized at The Reference Frame.
- John “Two America’s” Edwards is reality challenged, as shown at the Chicago Boyz.
- Sort of an invasion of the body snatchers by Bumi Dipijak.
- In which I am placed in exalted company at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength. My question to put to Anne’s essay would be if the fall is just loss of faith, what was accomplished by Christ on the cross and by his Ressurection on Pascha?
- Math and love at Sharper Iron.
- Dating Torah (or parts of it) at Parableman.
- Two interesting in one pdf/papers contained in this essay, this one specifically. One wonders if the Academy’s liberal notions only go skin deep, from Reasoned Audacity.
- New business models, and the implications for Hollywood and Islamic extremism at The Belmont Club. Also a disturbing revelation of the
perfidy, err, essential dishonesty of the mainstream media. - On silence. If you follow only one of my links today, this is the one.
- Mr MacMahon is a conservative. His graphic on Ms Clinton is undoubtably somewhat accurate, however, it very well might translate to a majority of the politicians in the field.
- A topic I’ve not written about enough by Aliens in this World.
- A historical myth held as belief by the pagans noted at the Claw of the Conciliator.
- Leithart talks (and explains succinctly) about Zizioulas on the ontology of personhood.
- I hope (pray?) the left stops thinking this way.
- Some progress in October in Iraq?
- Another story in which religion is being ignored.
Hi Mark
I’m not contending that the fall is “just” a loss of faith; I’m contending that the fall’s first misstep, the one that makes the rest inevitable, is the loss of faith.
I edited out the parts of that post on the consequences of the fall because it was a little off-topic for the current post, which looks at the key place of faith in both the fall and the redemption.
So read the original post in the spirit intended, not as an exhaustive catalog of what happens during the fall and redemption, but on the key place of unbelief during the fall and faith during the restoration.
Take care & God bless
Anne / WF
Anne,
I didn’t mean to be uncharitable, as you were responding not just to my post but a whole bunch of them. At any rate, I had only commented on the faith issue as regards its connection with justification and penal substitution. That is the “spirit”, to which my comment was intended.
I wonder though if loss of faith is sufficient explanation. Adam was “walking with God”, which seems to me a closer relationship than those of us today in the fallen world. Do you need faith when you have such a close active intimate relationship with God? It was his disobedience that led to expulsion and the fall.
On another note, N.T. Wright (who figures in at least some of these discussions) notes “Faith in Christ” as the equivalent in the New Covenant to circumcision and following Torah in the Old.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the link and the generous comments.
I can’t help but think that Amy has something fundamentally right here, though you are of course correct to point out the intrinsic connection between faith and obedience. If “faith” is defined as loving, loyal, trust, then faith as such very much would exist in Adam’s walking with God. I wrote a little blurb on this a while back in blogging through Genesis when I got to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. It is faith that obeys the voice of God.
I think you and I are working from different definitions of “faith”. “Faith” (in Lutheran parlance, remember I’m still on the other side of the Bosphorus) means “trust”. On that definition, faith is part and parcel of that “close active intimate relationship with God”, and asking if you “need” faith when you have that “close active intimate relationship with God” is a question which arises from a different definition of faith.
Btw I didn’t think you were uncharitable, just that I could see some things I wanted to clarify.