Re: Spinoff from Interfaith Dialogue - Salvation and the nature of Sin
That is a reasonable view regarding guidance, and pretty much what the Islamic view is as I understand it, although not necessarily God knocking first.
This is why I asked the question regarding the view of man’s sinfulness in Christianity and was talking on the basis of this answer:
Do you therefore believe that we are only born with the possibility of sin, or are we born as sinners already? In order words, upto the point where a person commits his first sin, is he infact sinless, and does he have absolutely no consequence in his afterlife of Adam’s sin?
Can you also tell us the beliefs on this specific question of various prominent groups within Christianity, the belief that until you commit your first sin you are by nature pure?
So what is the consequence of Jesus’s death? Is the possibility of sin removed from those who believe in Jesus? Or are they forgiven the consequences of their sins? In the former case you are adopting far too optimistic a view of a believer’s in Christ’s sinlessness. In the latter case you are taking away personal responsibility and encouraging an attitude of laxity towards sin.
Either God’s rules make sense, in which case it should be a sin to violate them, or they are capricious, pointless tediuous rules with no real purpose except to incur God’s wrath in the event of violation, which would make sense to find a way to not have to live by them.
I gave you multiple links, and actually did not parse through articles, only gave you the first five or six links that come up with the google search judaism+“original sin”, that looked relatively reliable (with .org domain names and well developed and jewish background).
The jewish difference of opinion is not on whether man himself is sinful when born, but whether we are on earth excluded from paradise as a result of Adam’s sin, and whether death is a result of Adam’s sin (since prior to that Adam was living an eternal life). Clearly that is divergent from the topic we are discussing, that man is inherently a sinner by default regardless of what he does.
In this post though you stress that man is not a sinner regardless of what he does, but infact has the potential to sin. That is not far from the judaic and Islamic view points, which though also stress that man also has the potential for good, a notion that Christianity always seems to disregard.
I should mention though that for much of Christianity it is not merely the capacity of sin that is inherited by birth, but it is actually the sin. The belief in Limbo for catholics,where unbaptized/unfreed from original sin people such as handicapped children go is an example of that.
What I meant was that the idea that atonement for Adam’s original sin must come through Jesus’s blood was first produced in scripture by Paul (he may have been taught that by Jesus) and the need for atonement by blood for Adam’s sin does not occur anywhere before that.
So in your view they will not be in Limbo?
Why will they be condemned? They still believe in Jesus?
But isnt a church’s view just a collection of people like you deciding what God’s view probably is (just as you are guaging God’s view yourself)