Chapter 18

From the transliteration given above, it should be noted (contrary to Geisler) that the parallel is actually continuing the comparison begun in verse 12. (I would recommend that the reader refer to the superscripted numbered text earlier in this chapter or to have his Bible turned to Romans 5:12-21 while we discuss this passage.) While in verse 15 the phrase “not as” [Geisler, (“not like“)] is to Geisler and the NASB a significant break from the parallel, they both seem to have overlooked that the phrase “like also” (i.e., lit. Gr., “in this manner also“) actually continues the comparison. Thus, the comparison in 15a should not be understood to be that of the transgression in contrast to the free gift, but of the transgression and the free gift in contrast to what is stated negatively (about those men between Adam and Moses) in relation to Adam’s offense in the previous verse (v. 14), the contrast of which will prove to be carried out (see vss.15ff) in an extended discussion in regards to the free gift.¹⁷⁷ Thus, the phrase which begins the 2^nd clause in verse 15 (”so also”)¹⁷⁸ completes a correlative conjunction as follows: even as¹⁷⁹ men have not technically participated in the similitude of Adam’s transgression, and yet die, so too will men have not technically participated in the obedience of the One, and yet live. Again, this is Paul’s thought and theology; i.e., that even as men between Adam and Moses did not technically break the Garden command of eating the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:16-17) leading to spiritual death—and yet themselves obtained for themselves spiritual death—so too would all those who, technically, did not live a life of obedience leading to justification, nevertheless obtain justification as though they had obeyed (because of the free gift of God as appropriated by their faith). The reason Paul appears to have brought up the subject of post-Adamic man in verses 13-14 is because of a natural objection that arises from his statement in verse 12 (that death traversed into all men), namely, Why should anyone but Adam experience death, since only Adam broke the divine, Garden Command leading to death? Thus Paul (reminding his readers of a point in principle he already made in chapter 2) explains in verses 13-14 that post-Adamic men were also subject to death for having transgressed the conscience, since they were a law unto themselves. Thus in chapter 5 Paul is stating that this consequence of spiritual death upon the Gentile is still the case, even though post-Adamic man had no such law as had Adam. Furthermore, and in passing, we note that the consequence of physical death which was brought upon all men because of the disobedience of one (the first Adam), shall be superceded by the physical resurrection and glorification of all those receiving the free gift made efficient by the obedience of One (the second Adam). Moreover, this gift comes from a Creator whose power guarantees our security much more than if the promise came from a mere man (see v. 16). Technically, in fact, the free gift is itself the obedience of the One (Christ) put to our account.

The remaining phrases purporting to teach the doctrine of original sin[e.g., “For if through the offence of one the many be dead” (v. 15b); see also verse 17a, verse 18a, and verse 19a, all of which make similar statements, have been so narrowly contextualized as to make the understanding of them as mere ellipses of the correlative conjunction of Romans 5:12 all but impossible. Yet the two statements of 15c and 16c, teaching that justification has abounded unto the many by the obedience of the One, ought, by implication of the distinction which Calvinists claim between “all” and “the many,” presumably be held by Calvinists to thus teach universalism, lest for Calvinists the hermeneutic for “all,” which they have just established in verse 12, be now discarded in the two-fold appearance of “all” in clauses 18a and 18b despite the fact that these clauses are the obvious parallel summation and recapitulation of clauses 15b and 15c, in which the two-fold appearance of “the many” occurs.¹⁸⁰ But then of what use is such a hermeneutic? Put another way, the Calvinistic hermeneutic for “all” and “the many” in Romans 5:12ff is only as secure as the parallel between 15b-15c and 18a-18b is not obvious. For Arminians the dilemma (regarding original sin) is not fundamentally any different. Arminians (if they follow Arminius) likewise hold to rocking horse theology but with an emphasis on the backward rock¹⁸¹ of man’s freedom. The situation for an Arminian like Geisler is thus: he speaks of ‘receiving’ but in fact such ‘receiving,’ properly understood (in deference to Geisler), can only de facto be done by a will that is uncorrupted, a point about the will’s nature which Geisler is not prepared to concede (though he thinks he is conceding it). Hence how is the ‘receiving’ spoken of by Geisler in accord with biblical definition? Thus Geisler’s attempt is one in which it appears man’s freedom is being stated, while in fact it is not. In other words, Geisler’s attempt is not really any different than the Calvinist’s, except that he is relatively more concerned than the Calvinist with expressing the ‘freedom of man’ rather than ‘the absolute sovereignty of God.’ Despite the confusion within both camps, the real and true biblical definition of receiving in verse 17 adds clarity to the interpretation of 15c and 16c. The receiving of verse 17 points back to verse 11 (Gr. Int. “through whom now we received the reconciliation”) as the support verse which in turn makes possible the ellipses of 15c and 16c. Thus 15b,¹⁸² 15c, 16c, 17a, 18a, and 19a are all ellipses—some of verse 11, and some of verse 12—and therefore ought to be interpreted with no more universal force than that implied in the referred verses themselves.

Thus in deference to what Geisler states, we can rightfully say that Paul continues the parallel and presents the idea that men indeed are not guilty of sin until they themselves commit it. Indeed, this view is the only one that can truly assert that every man is free in his will and is thus subject to, and judged by, God because of it.¹⁸³ Again, I stress this point in order to recover the biblical doctrine that man’s will was not corrupted by any alleged original sin that descended down from Adam. Rather, the will must be considered uncorrupted if man is truly to be free—free so that God may judge him—either of his works, or of his faith in Christ. This answers the first of Geisler’s three points. Granting this understanding, verses 15-16 seem best understood in the KJV:

^15(a)But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. ^15(b)For if through the offence of one many be dead, ^15(c)much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. ^16(a)And not as [like]it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: ^16(b)for the judgment was by one to condemnation, ^16(c)but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.

Again, in review, it should be observed that Paul’s statement in verse 13—that sin is not imputed when there is no law—is not an argument that men between Adam and Moses had no imputed sin (though it is true they had no imputed sin from Adam) but rather implies a follow-up connection with Romans 2 (and in fact with the whole theme of unreconciled post-Adamic man in all of Paul’s chapters up to this point), in which Paul states that a Gentile man was guilty even apart from the Mosiac law for having violated his own conscience.¹⁸⁴ For this reason spiritual death reigned from Adam to Moses, i.e., because a man’s imputed sin was a man’s own.

And yet let us assume, for the sake of hypothetical argument, that Paul in verses 12 and 13ff is stating the opposite idea, i.e., the doctrine of original sin. What then would he be expected to state in verse 13ff? Would he (as in fact he does) state that men who lived between Adam and Moses had NOT sinned according to the likeness of Adam’s sin? No, he would hardly do that. Rather, we would expect him to state the very opposite idea, making sure to tell his readers that men between Adam and Moses HAD sinned according to the exact image of Adam’s sin, since they had indeed sinned IN ADAM. But again, we see that Paul did not state it that way. Indeed, by verse 15 (as we have already seen) he makes it plain by stating that the free gift is also (i.e., along with post-Adamic man’s offense) NOT LIKE (in the minority sense of the comparison) its respective counterpart in the respective parallels being drawn (i.e., post-Adamic man’s offense to Adam’s offense, and our faith in Christ to the righteousness of Christ).

As for the word “Therefore” which begins Romans 5:12, this word is actually a phrase in the original Greek which ultimately provides the key to understanding verse 12 and the rest of chapter 5. The word ‘therefore’ (Gr. lit. ‘dia touto‘) literally means, “Because of this…” and informs the correlative-conjunction format of Romans 5:12 as follows: “Because of this…even as X, so too Y.” That is, Paul is about to explain the reason why sin, characterized by its effect of death, traversed through all men, not just through Adam, i.e., through him (Adam) who alone broke the specific command of God in the Garden which led to spiritual death in the day he ate the forbidden fruit. To do so, Paul points backward from his argument preceding verse 12, i.e., the ‘this’ in “Because of this…” In other words, Paul is saying (in effect), “Because of the preceding argument I have been making, we can now see the reason death traversed through all men (verse 12), including those between Adam and Moses (v. 13) who were outside the Law, even though post-Adamic men were not technically guilty of breaking God’s particular command in the Garden leading to death.” And, in fact, the preceding argument of Paul is one Paul has been advancing in some form since the middle of chapter one, i.e., an argument in which Adam has never even been mentioned, namely, that post-Adamic Gentile men who were without the Mosaic Law nevertheless were guilty of sin by transgressing their conscience, i.e., conscience as that which originally and properly existed in accordance with the creation of God which demonstrated undeniably to every Gentile the power and beneficent nature of God (Rom. 1:19-21). This fact of inexcusableness includes every man, even a relatively good man like Abraham (Rom. 4:2), who might have something about which to glory before men, but not before God. Thus in Romans chapter 4 Paul cites the man Abraham, who, though relatively good compared to other men, was still a sinner and in need of reconciliation with God. As such, Abraham was presumably one of those whom, as Paul states in Romans 5:6, might have dared to give their life for a (relatively) good man, i.e., a man like Abraham himself. And yet even such men as Abraham, who were of more noble character than most men, still failed in strength to love others as God loved them. This is because no man has loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, which in turn would have led him to consistently love his neighbor as himself. Therefore even Abraham, as one who lived between Adam and Moses (and thus lived subsequent to the Garden Command but prior to the Mosaic Law) was in need of reconciliation with God, even though he had not sinned according to the general likeness of Adam’s transgression. And here again it is important to note in what sense post-Adamic man did NOT sin according to the likeness of Adam’s sin: he did not transgress the Garden Command by eating the forbidden fruit. Thus (again) post-Adamic man’s sin and spiritual death were attributable to some other act which was nevertheless LIKE Adam’s sin generally, to wit, transgression against the conscience (since all sin, to qualify as sin, must be transgressive in nature). See page 491 (footnote 182) which explains that in any comparison of two things in which they are like each other, there is, in the defining sense of the word ‘like,’ a particular way or ways in which the things being compared must be unlike each other, even though, generally speaking, they are like each other. By analogy, let us say that two men are found to have wronged the same company. Both are fired for cheating (fundamental kind of sin), yet one did it by stealing money from the company safe while the other stole company secrets because he was promised payment from a competing company. Thus both men cheated the company that employed them, yet their cheating took different forms. Or again, let us say that there are two university students who are extremely energetic—one who applies all his energies to the proper study of his classes, and one who puts all his energies into cheating on exams. Thus they may be compared generally as energetic, if that is the main point to which the one describing them wishes to draw attention, but there is still a difference within the comparison of the two students (i.e., a moral difference). So then, in any comparison there is the general sense in which the things being compared to each other are alike, while at the same time there is in the minority sense a point or points in which they are not alike. Even so, Paul is saying that both Adam and post-Adamic men are guilty of wrongdoing as having disobeyed their respective consciences (both of which were in accord with creation’s evidences of God’s power and beneficent nature), yet Adam and post-Adamic man sinned in different forms, the former as under a specific divine Command, the latter without it.

So the fact that all men need reconciliation, as expressed in Romans 5:1-11, though especially in verse 6, explains what Paul is doing in Romans 5:12 Notice, then, the general weakness¹⁸⁵ of humanity in Romans 5:1-11:

¹Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. ³And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; ⁴and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; ⁵and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. ⁶ For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ¹¹And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

To give, then (because it seems beneficial to do), an interpretive paraphrase of verse 12, Paul is saying, “Because of this (i.e., that all men have failed in strength to do the right thing), even as sin entered the world by one man, resulting in spiritual death, also in this manner death passed upon all men, since all have sinned.” I have underlined the first and last phrases above, because I believe this is the momentum of Paul’s argument (as noted earlier). Further, I have boldened the word also, since the emphasis of the phrase kai outws appears to be on the kai (see prior footnote #182 on the similar phrases kai outws and outws kai). Notice, then, that the first part of the correlative conjunction¹⁸⁶ of verse 12 ‘takes a back seat’ (acts parenthetical) to the general momentum of the argument. That is, “Because of this… death passed upon all men, since all have sinned.” And Paul speaks of sin as a philosopher might do, personifying it as an outside force (along with its effect) which enters the world and then passes (lit. traverses) through all (the world of) men. Note that Paul would be stating something incomprehensible if he introduced verse 12 with “Because of this…” and meant that the word ‘this’ should refer to the word immediately preceding the opening phrase of verse 12, that is, reconciliation,which closes out the previous verse, and thus would have the apostle saying that because of reconciliation, therefore death spread throughout the world. Such an idea would make no sense, except in the most monstrous sense in which God might be imagined to decree good that evil might result. Thus (as we have already noted) the reader is beckoned by Paul to look backward for a statement about sin prior to verse 12 which would encapsulate his general preceding argument and explain sin’s prevalence in the world. And again, the nearest statement that can be found prior to verse 12 is in verse 6, ¹⁸⁷which describes men as weak (lit. without strength) to do the right thing, i.e., consistently. (I say ‘consistently’ because of what we have already noted about Paul’s use of ekzetein instead of zetein in Romans 3:11,¹⁸⁸ i.e., to seek God diligently). Note the similarity in Paul’s statement to Jesus’ statement, when Jesus says to his disciples that the flesh is weak. The Lord here was making a general statement about the flesh, not just the disciples’ flesh; and likewise Paul observes here in Romans 5:6 that men were weak (again, lit. without strength) to do the right thing. Thus, because man allowed his weakness to prevail, he became in need of reconciliation, and as such was thus unable to provide his own atonement and (therefore) dead in his sins. Of course this kind of deadness is different than saying that man has been dead in sin upon conception, as the Calvinist would contend.¹⁸⁹

In review then, in verse 13 Paul argues that the fact of man’s need of reconciliation, which we note was caused by man’s yielding to his weakness as alluded to in the opening phrase of verse 12, i.e., ‘Because of this,’ thus points back to the section prior, that is, particularly to verse 6, which goes to the epistle’s general argument about Gentile weakness leading to sin and death. Thus sin was imputed to post-Adamic men upon the basis of transgressing the conscience. Again, Paul had made this point about the conscience earlier in his epistle (chapts. 2-3) while pointing out that Gentiles who had no law were nevertheless a law unto themselves. Paul had then provided examples in chapter 3 to demonstrate specifically upon what basis these same Gentiles were guilty, i.e., they had hypocritically claimed that others ought not to steal and murder yet were guilty of such sins themselves. In short, men claim that others ought not to act selfish, but every man has acted selfish in regard to others, in ways he himself condemns.

Paul soon follows this idea of “all men sinned” by a kind of umbrella-ing of the two offenses (Adam’s type and post-Adamic man’s type) under ‘the offense of the one’ spoken of in verse 15b. Paul is now pointing out the sense in which post-Adamic man’s sin IS like Adam’s sin, i.e., sin as transgression against the conscience. Thus momentarily, Paul appears to be combining these two kinds of offenses (Adam’s and post-Adamic man’s) so that he can use a rhetorical device to compare the First Adam to the Second Adam. Remember what we have already defined to be the nature of a comparison: i.e., to say that A is like B is to say that A is generally like B but at the same time is different than B in some particular(s). Thus in verse 18a Paul uses the word ‘like’ (Gr. ws) to speak of the similarity and difference between the sin of Adam and post-Adamic man. To do this Paul speaks of sin as a personified force which placed the remainder of men into condemnation (sin as repeated in every man). Of course, Paul is not saying that sin is an entity apart from the will of man, as though somehow it were an irresistible force acting from inside or outside Adam or post-Adamic man to the guaranteeing of a certain wrongful action. Rather, Paul is simply using a rhetorical device. As previously noted, Paul had already set forth the argument in verse 6 about man’s weakness (under which influence men committed sin) and later identified and personified the choices surrounding that weakness under the nomenclature sin in verse 12—first as an outside force, and second, as that force’s effect spreading itself through the world of men. Arguably, the use of such a rhetorical device to describe sin as an outside singular force,might lead some readers, who fail to recognize the personification for what it is, to read too much into the phrase of 15b, i.e., “through the transgression of the one,” so that the notion might be imagined that Paul was speaking of sin (singular) as an irresistible causal force descending from Adam into all.

Note that the word ‘like’ (KJV ‘as’) is preserved along these two aspects of its meaning (alike in generality, unlike in some particularity), so that Paul in 15b (along with its approximate equivalent in 18a) is not setting up a logical contradiction with what has already been stated regarding every man being the cause of his own sin. Because most commentators have missed this dual aspect of like, their influence upon the casual reader has been very significant: i.e., the reader interprets 15b apart from its surrounding context, then commits the additional error of taking epi ho in verse 12 as supporting 15b by treating it as a referent to the first part of the correlative conjunction of verse 12 (even though epi ho comes after the second part of the correlative conjunction), and then commits a third error by not recognizing the ‘as’ in verse 18a as meaning ‘like’ [which, when 18a is properly taken as an ellipsis of verse 12, thus properly supports the point about epi ho meaning ‘on the grounds of the fact that’ (i.e., since)], and so on, ending up in total confusion of interpretation. Thus Calvinists find it easy in the overall passage to resolve the problem of ‘apparent contradictions’ dialectically, that is, along irrational lines, and thus conclude that ‘Adam chose our choice’ [as though (and we speak here with some asperity) the ‘our’ could really be understood to mean both our and Adam’s ! ]. The reason Calvinists misread Romans 5:12ff, as well as many passages, stems from a simple problem—they rely too much on the English translations. Frankly, in key instances they too often refuse to recognize the loss of meaning in translation.

Of course, the natural question remains as to why Paul would make this passage complex in meaning. I submit, however, that to Paul’s original readers it did not appear as complex as it does to us today. None of us, myself included, can really gauge accurately how much we have been affected negatively by the spiritual propaganda (ouch!) about original sin we formerly received, however unintentionally it was conveyed to us. The truth only strikes us Western contemporary readers as especially difficult to accept because we are on the far side of Augustine’s bogus claim that the passage teaches original sin, a claim which, once it was first made with substantial force by Augustine, was then seized upon and promulgated by Church councils and/or their minions for 17 centuries. I personally find it more than a little hypocritical that today’s Protestants, who are quick enough to condemn the Catholic institution of the Pope, nevertheless regard past Church councils, or even today’s seminaries, as though their repeated endorsements of the doctrine of original sin were the last, august word anyone ought to possibly say on the matter, i.e., that all these councils’ et al. pronouncements are above not only reproach, but also analytical critique. Nevertheless, the reason Paul in Romans 5:12-21 was not so hesitant to discuss sin as a personification in the ‘like, yet unlike’ correlative-conjunctive manner he did, was because the Romans to whom he addressed his epistle would not have read verse 15b with any of the Augustinian baggage that would come to affect later readers. Of course, this baggage is not all Augustine’s fault (though his works live after him), for every man is responsible for what he himself believes. Nevertheless, the intimidating effect of centuries of church dogma, preached by church leaders and endorsed by Church councils and supporting institutions (both Catholic and Protestant), is not to be underestimated. I can only leave it to the reader’s own judgment, as he relies on the Spirit, to tell him if the resolution we advance here is a Spirit-led recovery of the biblical doctrine of the freedom of the will, or whether the Calvinist’s solution of irrationalism to the annihilation of the will (and every other term and concept) is the correct one.

Now, let us move on to look more closely at this point about the word ‘as’ in verses 18 and 19. In short, then, ‘as’ does not mean ’since,’ but means ‘like’ (i.e., ’similar,’ ‘likewise’) in verse 18 and ‘even likewise’ in verse 19. A quick online BlueLetterBible lexical search of the New Testament demonstrates the meaning of ws to ‘like(wise)’ and the meaning of hosper to ‘even as/like(wise).’ And so, because of the error of translators who ignored the lexical evidence of ws and hosper, the opening phrase of verse 18—So then, as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men’—is taken by most readers to mean, ‘So then, since¹⁹⁰ through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men…’ But again, such a reading is lexically incorrect, for Gr. ws defines nothing causatively (which the word ’since’implies); it simply means ‘like,’ ’similar,’ ‘likewise.’ Thus the opening phrase of verse 18 literally means “So, then, like through one transgression into all men into condemnation…” Or to put it in plainer if in somewhat translationally inferior English: “So, then, all men came into condemnation similarly (Gr. ws) through one transgression [i.e., the transgression which comes despite the absence of divine, revelatory Law…(verse 19)]. For just like through the one man’s disobedience the many were constituted sinners, even so will the many be righteous through the obedience of the One.” Again, the ‘like,’ in verse 18a and ‘even like’ in 19a, points back to the post-Adamic kind of offense which was like Adam’s offense in the general sense that Paul could legitimately state that it was, that is, as transgression against the conscience. Further, this transgression against the conscience is Paul’s explanation why all persons have traversed from their state of probation into condemnation.

This observation about ws and hosper in verses 18 and 19, respectively, bears directly on verse 15b, which states (Int., and reading somewhat awkwardly): For if by the of the one offense the many were made sinners…—that is, [as proven by verse 18a when Paul summarizes (again, note the “So then”) the preceding verses including verse 15b above], Paul here in 15b avoids the word ‘as’ (like) for the purpose of using a rhetorical device to draw a simple contrast between the first Adam and the second Adam. Therefore, since 15b is proven to be more of an ellipsis than its summary in 18a, verse 15b should not be interpreted with any such force which would violate the more detailed summarization of it (in its echo of v. 12) in 18a. Thus the point of 15b is that Adam serves in principle as the one whose way leads to death, even as in 15c Christ serves in principle as the One whose way leads to life. And in this sense (the sense of ‘as though’) we observe that the similarity between Adam and post-Adamic man is never much relaxed throughout the entire passage of Romans 5:12-21, except of course in the particular sense in which they are distinguished from each other in verses 13-14. Again, it is more than a little disturbing that the near universal opinion of commentators has failed to draw the proper conclusions from all the evidences we have been observing in this chapter, both lexically and logically, i.e., 1) the evidence of hosper; 2) the various correlative conjunctions that argue against ‘all in Adam’ explanations; 3) the ellipses that point back to the correlative conjunctions; 4) the similarity (not contrast) showing that post-Adamic man’s sin and the believer’s belief both end in a result not born of themselves in regard to the Law (capital ‘L’); 5) the importance of the opening phrase in verse 12, i.e., “Because of this” 6) the obvious parallel between 15b-15c and 18a-18b which shows “all” to be synonymous, if less descriptive, of “the many,” etc.

But moving on further, in verse 20 Paul speaks of Law (Int.) “coming in beside,¹⁹¹ that the offense might abound.” ‘Law,’ though here without the article (with the article would be ‘the Law’), would nevertheless appear to mean the Mosaic Law, for Paul has spoken earlier of the interim between Adam and Moses as a time without Law, and yet God had spoken to Noah, Job, Abraham, etc. —i.e., communication that would qualify as revelation and instruction and thus be something which we might imagine ought to called ‘Law,’ but apparently wrongly here, since the Bible states that post-Adamic man sinned apart from the Law. Therefore the ‘Law’ which Paul refers to in this verse must mean something more than God’s revelation during this interim period. Presumably, it means Law which is accompanied by a specific divine warning the violation of which, man is told, shall lead to spiritual death.

But a further question is this: the Law came alongside what ? The answer would seem to be that thing which Law came alongside sympathetically, i.e. a thing companionable with Law. And this would seem to be, or primarily be, man’s conscience, which likewise informed man about right and wrong just as the Mosaic Law would do. Yet the introduction of the Mosaic Law also gave man more opportunity to resist God unto an abounding of sin, since it introduced a greater knowledge about God and therefore opportunity and accountability. For not since the Command in the Garden had man known a Law whose consequence was divinely stated to be spiritual death; for man’s expulsion from the Garden had placed him outside the Garden Command’s relevance and application, since post-Adamic man had no access to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.

Moreover, the phrase in this verse, ’so that the offense might abound’ does not mean ‘for the purpose that sin ought to abound,’ but rather means ‘with the result that the offense would conditionally abound (i.e., conditioned upon the choices of men).’¹⁹² But again, the main point here is that all men came into condemnation in a way similar to, not in, Adam. That is, Paul is following the general sense meaning of 15b, which has been his primary level of meaning in verses 12-14. Unfortunately, however, the NAS has maintained the KJV’s ambiguous meaning of the word ‘as’ in verses 18 and 19, leaving the impression upon English readers that all men have sinned because of Adam. Nevertheless, despite this ambiguity of ‘as’ in so many English translations of Romans 5:15, 18-19, which ignore as’s proper meaning of ‘like,’ the argument ought to be conceded that any other phrase or verse in Romans 5:12-21 read so narrowly that it contradicts the objective, lexical meaning of ws and hosper as like and just like, respectively (the proper meaning of which Paul uses) in the context of verses 12, 15a, 18, and 19, is on a wrong footing, for having wrongly presupposed that Paul assumes a doctrine of original sin in the overall passage.

As for Geisler’s second point, we maintain that the consequence of physical death, which descended upon all men (and creatures) as a consequence of Adam’s sin, is not a proof against our rebuttal of the doctrine of original sin insofar as we have stated it. For we have already distinguished between the physical death which falls upon all creatures in creation regardless of the effect of original sin (granting for the moment the idea of original sin) and the spiritual death which comes upon every man who has violated his conscience.

Finally, Geisler’s third point claims that there is no parallel to our receiving Christ in the relevant Romans 5 discussion. But as already noted in verse 12, even as one man’s sin caused spiritual death to enter the world (and so death by sin), in this manner also death spread to all, since all have sinned. This statement, in the form of a correlative conjunction and as supported by the arguments we have been advancing, shows that every man individually has chosen to sin apart from ’sinning in Adam,’ and thus (contrary to Geisler’s claim) does in fact parallel the free will that is necessary to accept the free gift of Christ. Unfortunately (and again), most Evangelicals seem to have overlooked the “so also” of verse 15a, choosing instead to think that the passage is saying that the parallel ceases. Thus (again we note), the NAS’s mistaken translation: “But the free gift is not as the transgression.” For most Evangelicals the parallel ceases with verse 15 because they believe the comparison is found in the positive work of Christ which is said to be “much more” positive than Adam’s negative sin was negative. And while certainly we would agree with the technical point that Christ, as the Creator, will so glorify the believer as to make the comparison of his glorification to his former suffering from sin in Adam’s begotten sinful world an unworthy comparison, this is not the comparison of which verse 15 is speaking. For again, the traditional Evangelical view fails to understand that the opening words of verse 15—”But not as,”—though it rapidly moves forward the argument from the previous verse, nevertheless refers back and implies the prepositional phrase of verse 14 (i.e., them [those] born between Adam and Moses who sinned not after the similitude of Adam’s transgression and yet had spiritually died). Thus the prepositional phrase of verse 14 is stated only by ellipsis in verse 15’s opening words, i.e., “But not as”, lest Paul be forced to rewrite at the beginning of verse 15 the entire long prepositional phrase of his previous verse. Unless this ellipsis is understood (again, on the lexical strength of verse 15’s “so also“), the entire meaning changes. Unfortunately, Evangelicals use translations that do not recognize the presence (and therefore the meaning) of ’so also.’

Conclusion

In summary, then, here are some key ideas to be remembered about Romans 5:12-15:

Verse 12

Because of this —i.e.,Because of the preceding argument regarding sin (v. 6), which in turn encapsulates the general argument from chapter 1 and forward, which regards man as guilty as having transgressed against the conscience.

Even as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death traversed into all men, since all have sinned —The format is a correlative conjunction of comparison. Even as sin entered the world through Adam (with spiritual death the result), so death traversed into men because of the same principle of violation against the conscience (i.e. conscience as in accord with God’s nature), since every man has sinned.

Verse 13-14

For sin was in the world until Law, —post-Adamic man showed that he too, not just Adam, was sinful.

But sin is not charged where there is no law: but [rather, yet] death reigned from Adam until Moses, even on those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a type of the coming One —God does not put sin to a man’s account unless he has broken God’s law. It might seem, then, that, although Adam broke the Command that forbade him to eat of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and therefore died (spiritually) in the day he ate thereof, post-Adamic man should not die for not having broken the specific divine Command whose consequences were death. But since, in fact, post-Adamic man has spiritually died, it is evident he is guilty in the general way that Adam was guilty, i.e., in having transgressed against his conscience (which is in accord with God’s nature), i.e., even though post-Adamic man did not sin like Adam in the same particular way of breaking the Garden Command. Despite Adam being a sinner, he is nevertheless a type of the righteous Christ insofar as being one who principled a fundamental kind of way.

Verse 15

But not as the offence, so also the free gift, —the phrase “so also” actually continues the comparison. Thus, the comparison should not be understood to be that of the transgression in contrast to the free gift, but of the transgression and the free gift in contrast to what is stated negatively about those men (between Adam and Moses) in relation to Adam’s offense in the previous verse (v. 14) and as carried out in an extended discussion in regards to the free gift, respectively. Thus the phrase “so also,” beginning the 2^nd clause of 15a, which itself forms a correlative conjunction [in which the subject (post-Adamic man’s sin)] is assumed present in the first clause (”But not as”) by way of ellipsis, has in view the following: even as men have not technically participated in the similitude of Adam’s transgression, and yet die; so too will men have not technically participated in the obedience of the One, and yet live.

So then, without doubt Romans 5:12ff is one of Paul’s most difficult passages in his epistles to understand. Yet, once these verses are properly understood, we see that they convey interesting truths about Adam and post-Adamic man in contrast to Christ. And if we should not marvel how so difficult a passage could become easily misinterpreted by some, it should nevertheless warn us that any conclusion so much at odds with common sense knowledge, i.e., such a conclusion that would suppose that one man could forcefully choose for another man what his moral content shall be, could not also be biblical.

The rippling out of such ‘original sin’ theology has caused disastrous, if predictable, waves on the shore of Evangelical evangelism. For example, this insistence on ‘Adamic sin in all’ ironically reminds me of the time, decades ago, when I heard an Evangelical missionary tell of his difficulty in trying to dissuade the average Japanese person from identifying himself with the ancestral sin in which the Japanese person sees himself indistinguishably submerged. Indeed, what in this missionary’s own Evangelical theology could have fundamentally made such a correction possible? In fact, nothing at all. Moreover, there is no use in someone claiming that even an error in Evangelical theology, such as the doctrine of original sin, can help result in an unbeliever of another culture identifying more quickly with the gospel message, since e.g., ‘original sin’ mirrors their own idea of ancestral sin. As Christ pointed out, only the truth sets people free. Therefore any admixture of truth with error merely weakens the overall gospel message and presentation.

Thus, the result of holding to the notion of original sin has created many problems for Evangelical theology, not the least of which is the whole confusion caused by creating permeable boundaries between the being of one person and that of another, so typical of Calvinist thought elsewhere. Did Adam choose our choice? The average Evangelical gives the same answer to this question as the Calvinist does to the question of whether God chooses our choices—”yes but no.” This kind of answer (if answer it be) is ever present in a discussion with Calvinists or, for that matter, with most Evangelical non-Calvinists in any discussion about original sin. We can only hope and pray that the situation changes. For Christ said that our yea should be yea, and our nay should be nay; for whatever is more than these is of the evil one.

Question:

Psalm 51:5 states that David was conceived in sin by his mother. This seems to plainly state that David was a sinner from his very conception. Doesn’t this mean, then, that he inherited this condition from Adam? And can’t we understand original sin as starting out like a ’seed’ just like you claim happens for the knowledge of good and evil?

Answer:

Even A.S. Barnes, the relatively well-known Reformed commentator, believed that the doctrine of original sin could not be argued from Psalm 51:5 alone. As for the idea of original sin, or a ’seed’ of original sin being present but unblossomed into de facto sin, I can find no lexical evidence for either idea in Romans 5, which is the most thorough treatment in the Bible about the origin of sin and its spreading to all of accountable humanity. Moreover, based on our study thus far, that which may be transmitted in ’seed’ from one generation to another must be, by its nature, a form without eternally liable content (or even bare content) since persons form their own content and, as they mature, eternally liable content (i.e., what they will believe unto eternal consequence). Thus a post-Adamic person receives from his parents the seed of the knowledge of good and evil (i.e., the seed of the ability to know about good and evil in a way similar to God) but without any content.¹⁹³

Having shown the proper understanding of Romans 5:12-21, it remains for us to consider the meaning of Psalm 51:5, which is often cited in support of the doctrine of original sin. Again, the verse reads:

Behold, I was shapen (lit. brought forth) in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Young’s Literal translation shows the non-chronological parallelism more clearly:

Lo, in iniquity I have been brought forth,

And in sin doth my mother conceive me.

The best explanation of this verse appears to be what some have offered based on the nature of Hebrew poetry and other comparative Psalms. This view explains the verse as poetic exaggeration. In Psalm 51, for example, there are numerous phrases not meant to be taken literally: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity” (that is, ‘Remove completely mine iniquity’); “Purge me with hyssop,” [hyssop was a moss like plant that was dipped into blood for ceremonial sprinkling, thus hyssop is used substitutively in verse 7 for the substance (blood) in which it is dipped. This literary device of noun substitution is known as a metonymy]; “the bones that (God) has broken may rejoice.” Contrast these with the non-exaggerative statement, “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness ” [Lit. bloods, i.e.,bloodshed as drops of blood (the noun is in the plural form) and perhaps here meaning also the bloodshed of men, as Uriah was not the only one who died through the bogus battle maneuver David designed to cover up his adultery]. The idea here in these former examples is that David exaggerates in verse 5 as he does in other places in the same Psalm to emphasize his sinfulness, i.e., even as he did in Psalm 22, when the deep awareness of his sinfulness led him to exaggeratively say that he was a ‘worm.‘ In Psalm 22 David also says: “I was cast upon [God] from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.”Presumably no one uses Psalm 22:10 to argue that David had original perfection, but then what is the point of arguing one exaggeration to be literal (in sin did my mother conceive me) while the other is not (thou art my God from my mother’s belly)?While Psalm 22 is Messianic and admittedly layered in meaning, it nevertheless uses less exaggeration than Psalm 51. On that basis Psalm 51 ought to be considered generally more hyperbolic of the two. In yet another Psalm (Ps. 58) David speaks of the wicked speaking lies as soon as they are born. Presumably, we are not meant to think that this happens literally. Arguably, this Psalm (which also speaks of the youthful wicked being young lions) has more hyperbole than either Psalms 51 or 22. Upon what basis, then, do we say that Psalm 22, which is less exaggerative than Psalm 51, and Psalm 58, which is more exaggerative than Psalm 51, are hyperbolic in parts while Psalm 51:5 cannot possibly be?

Further, consider how key texts like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 14, which are often cited in support of the doctrine of original sin, do not really assume that man is inherently depraved. Isaiah 53 ¹⁹⁴ says that we have all gone astray unto our own way like sheep, and Psalm 14 speaks of God looking down and seeing us gone aside (out of the way) to do evil. This is active wandering, not a passive state. So again, the question begs itself: Gone astray from where—gone aside from whom? How can a morally depraved person, if he has been morally wayward from the time of conception, go astray from a state of sinfulness in which he was allegedly conceived?¹⁹⁵

The chief understanding of Psalm 51:5 may thus be understood as hyperbolic. David, in the same spirit of saying, “I am a worm, and no man,” uses poetic exaggeration to state his sinfulness without excuse. He expresses, in effect, his heightened sense of sin to which God has brought him to realize through the prophet Nathan: ‘I have always been like this from the beginning.‘ Again, as hyperbole this is not a statement indicating original sin, since that idea is contradicted in Romans 5. Indeed, to not take this hyperbolic approach in order to assume that “in sin” teaches ‘Adamic sin upon all,’ is to imperil a proper understanding of Romans 5:12-21 and to ignore (as so many translations have done) the correlative conjunction in Romans 5:12 which informs and impacts that entire passage, a point confirmed through subsequent appearances of ws and hosper.

On a personal note, and despite what God has recently been teaching me regarding ‘original sin,’ I struggled with giving up my old understanding of Psalm 51:5. I used it decades ago in a speech at college to argue for ensoulment at the time of conception. As ensoulment equaled personhood, I argued that the fetus ought to be considered human and therefore protected against abortion. For this reason I was not initially satisfied about understanding the verse differently. But when I considered how the overall context of the Bible resisted a Calvinistic interpretation (as we have shown throughout this book), I had to consider whether one isolated verse that seemed to point in the direction of original sin really did point there. I have discovered that, in interpreting the Bible, one either takes the whole of Scripture where one wants to go, or the whole of Scripture takes you where it wants to go. However, to my delight I have since realized that in the layer of Messianic (and literal) meaning of Psalm 51:5, which will be discussed in the course of this answer, the Bible does teach that life begins at conception.

So the above hyperbolic interpretation does not appear to be the only layer of meaning intended by the Spirit. There are at least two other layers arguably present. In some sense these layers of meaning are made possible because of the absence of Hebrew suffixes to prepositions that would have referred the reader to the identity of the subject(s) of ‘in iniquity’ and ‘in sin.’ Such grammatical pointers are conspicuously absent. Thus there are no strong indications as to who is being indicated by these prepositional phrases, i.e., where sin comes from or who is doing the sinning. Some therefore assume that, because there are no specific referents, original sin is being implied (or stated). But based on our considerations in the last question regarding Romans 5:12-21, sin is not a condition whose causative agent is itself but in fact is from out of the man himself. This in turn suggests a reason why the referent ambiguity of Psalm 51:5 does not provide restricted direction for ‘in iniquity’ and ‘in sin’—i.e., because there is more than just the hyperbolic meaning intended here.

Now in regard to the first clause of verse 5, “Lo, in iniquity was I brought forth,” it is interesting to note that the word “iniquity” involves a root meaning of “perversity,” yet according to Strong’s, the word can also mean punishment or a consequence related to punishment. Accordingly, ‘perversity’ in such instances would not mean something sinful but rather something of punishment or of the consequence of punishment. Along these lines, a pastor friend¹⁹⁶ of mine recently pointed out to me that the childbirth described in Psalm 51 (as post-Fall) is a perversity from that which God originally intended. He bases this on Genesis 3:16. There it implies that gestation was shorter prior to the Fall, and childbirth sorrow-free. Thus the consequence of Eve’s sin was that woman would henceforth have difficulty and painful sorrow in childbirth. Young’s transliteration of Genesis 3:16 shows God’s irony of expression to Eve: “Multiplying¹⁹⁷ I multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow dost thou bear children.”¹⁹⁸Therefore the first clause of Psalm 51:5, by indirect implication, may be understood as David acknowledging the perversity (his possession of the seed of the knowledge of good and evil) that attended his own gestation and delivery into the world as a descendent whose roots went back to Adam and Eve.

Further, although the Hebrew word avon is most often rendered as ‘iniquity’ compared to its next most frequent rendering in English, i.e., ‘punishment’ (220 compared to 5 in the KJV), the preference for ‘punishment’ in certain cases (Gen. 19:15 and Ex. 20:5) is evident. The question, then, is whether the word ‘iniquity’ can be legitimately translated ‘punishment’ or ‘consequence of punishment’ in Psalm 51:5? The answer appears to be no if understanding the verse’s main hyperbolic intention, but yes if taking the verse literally. In other words avon may be intended to have a polyvalent meaning in accordance with its varied (though we presume here, divinely intended) lexical use, much like the meaning of almah in Isaiah 7:14, where in Isaiah God has more than one meaning in mind.¹⁹⁹ But first we must concede that in the near context of Psalm 51:2 David obviously has in mind the transgressive nature of avon, since he 1) asks God in verse 2a to wash him from his iniquity (avon), and 2) puts verse 2a in parallel with verse 2b, in which he asks God to cleanse him from sin. Moreover (regarding the possible meanings of ‘iniquity’) Paul, in Romans 4:7-8, quotes Psalm 32:1-2 in a similar context about sinfulness and renders the Old Testament word iniquity as sin.

The question, then, is whether there can be an additional meaning? Again, it appears so, providing that meaning is a literal one. Observe, for example, how the two phrases of Psalm 51:5 together form a poetic parallelism which at least, in accordance with a literal interpretation, points in some sense back to David’s mother. Further, the Hebrew verb khool (twirl/ whirl/ brought forth/ writhe) in verse 5a is in its passive form, whereas the verb yacham (to conceive/ get heat/ be hot/ get warm) used in verse 5b is active. This distinction in verb forms shows that the parallelism of Hebrew poetry in this particular verse (i.e., as seen in clause A, clause B) form two statements that are similar to each other, but not exact, and so the parallelism of the two phrases should not be pushed to its strictest sense.

So besides the hyperbolic layer of meaning that places David as the subject and then object referent of the two prepositional phrases respectively,²⁰⁰ we also have a literal layer of meaning which runs through both clauses. The first clause places David as the referent of the prepositional phrase, which in turn implies the presence of his mother, the justification of whose presence is the parallelism which has her clearly in view in the second clause (that is, in the particular layer of meaning we are advancing here, though also in the hyperbolic layer of meaning, but not in the third layer of meaning we will describe in a moment, which is Messianic). In the second clause, David’s mother is the referent of “in sin.” So Psalm 51:5, viewed literally and according to this 2^nd layer of meaning, would be stating (in clause A) that David was brought forth in the pain and anguish of his mother, and (clause B) that David’s mother was under the state of sinfulness when she conceived David. The real significance of this layer of meaning will become clear in a moment.

To begin with, the two phrases, though not in reproductively chronological order, are suggestive of two stated conditions of David’s mother—a perversity of flesh, and a sinfulness stemming from choice. In fact, these are the two conditions that characterize every post-Adamic person who has traveled through the age of accountability.

Consider this first condition of David’s mother—the perversity of her flesh, i.e., the state of her having the knowledge of good and evil. This was the result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, in which the first man and the first woman also suffered (besides spiritual death and a gaining of knowledge) separate consequences of physical punishment. For the Man it was the multiplicity of growth—weeds—so that the ground would not yield its strength. For the Woman it was the multiplicity of pain in the childbirth process, including a lengthier gestation period. These were God’s ironic, divine consequences upon the original pair for choosing to multiply knowledge. For the Woman this pain is presumably to remind her that the child she bears, though generally blessed of God as made in God’s image, is nevertheless not as He intended (since the child is also made in Adam’s image as bearing the seed of the knowledge of good and evil). Again, the psalmist is, for the moment, primarily viewing himself within a context of childbirth, and so our attention is drawn in some sense to the stated condition of the mother. This is not because David is trying to throw embarrassing attention away from his sin. Indeed, in the course of Psalm 51, David will not excuse himself for his sin with Bathsheba. But here, in this particular layer of literal meaning, David seems to be looking beyond his particular actions in order to contemplate the larger problem of human sin in general. In effect, he appears to be asking himself, ‘What are the factors affecting this general drift of man away from God, of which my sin with Bathsheba, though so great an offense, is still but one significant failing among so many in humanity?’

Thus again, the thought in Psalm 51:5a could include the idea that David’s mother, in her writhing pain of childbirth which mirrors her son’s own writhing as he is brought forth, bespeaks of the knowledge of good and evil as the pain’s ultimate cause. This knowledge she passes in seed to her children (including David) by means of her husband Jesse, whose presence is implied in the conception mentioned in the second clause. Thus David, as a kind of ‘pointer,’ points generationally backwards to his mother²⁰¹ who is implied in the first clause, from whom he received a perversity of flesh, namely, the seed of the knowledge of good and evil. Moreover, David’s sin with Bathsheba points to his activity according to this seed of knowledge, i.e., knowledge as having matured and to which he has acted in accord (i.e., as he walked according to the flesh). Hence David explores the chronology of sin and its effect from the Fall and observes its spiritual, physiological, and emotional effects, all of which he finds tragic.

Thus in his mother’s begetting of him, there may be implied here (for David) a twisting of his own nature when he was formed—his mind (as a form) whirled and twirled,²⁰² so to speak, about his lower form as a man, i.e., with the seed of the knowledge of good and evil as inherited through his mother as a descendent from Adam.²⁰³ Presumably, David looks back and sees that this knowledge came to mature within his nature to a point where he deliberated and made decisions about thoughts and moral judgments within a context of a fallen flesh which God had never intended for men and women. This flesh—containing the knowledge of good and evil—whirled David about with its distracting presentation, until the decisions he made were either agreeable to his conscience, or disagreeable to his conscience [and therefore in accordance with his flesh, i.e., the knowledge of good and evil (with its more intensive realization of pleasure in sin)]. His decision to commit adultery with Bathsheba was made in disagreement with his conscience, though in fact it was especially made against God, as the Supreme Law-Giver. All this is implied in David’s mother’s perversity of flesh and the consequence of distraction that made it difficult for David to focus upon the right decisions as he grew into maturity. That is, the reader may infer it if he understands the circumstances of David and his mother, which informs the context of Psalm 51. Thus the above considerations appear to offer a literal, if subsidiary, understanding of Psalm 51:5.

But something else should be noted about the 2nd clause in this 2^nd layer of meaning, i.e., “and in sin did my mother conceive me.” It has been noted that ’sin’ could refer to the mother’s sin if the phrase had to be taken literally. For example, in the statement, “In anger my boss fired me” the anger would be my boss’s, not mine. Even so, the phrase “In sin did my mother conceive me” could mean the mother existed in the state of sinfulness. By this we simply mean that David’s mother, like all accountable persons, was a sinner. Paul, for example, even during his apostleship, stated that he was the chief of sinners. Thus David might be implying that the human condition as trans-generational is such that people have always found a way to sin, and to have found it rather easily. Again, we note that no suffix actually refers these prepositional phrases to either David or his mother, but (we contend) this is because David is emphasizing himself in the 1^st layer of meaning but emphasizing his mother in the 2^nd layer of meaning, i.e., that while for David the hyperbolic meaning stresses the idea of ‘the sinfulness of me,’ the literal meaning emphasizes ‘the sinfulness of my mother ‘ (this latter point of which (again) appears to emphasize the sad merryless-go-round of sin in human experience).

Note that both layers of meaning (the hyperbolic and the literal) examined thus far are not in harmony with a proposed doctrine of original sin. So if in the literal meaning we grant that David’s mother isan implied factor in both clauses of verse 5, we can observe that David’s mother, in the second clause, could be thought active in the process of conceiving, in a way in which the one conceived (David, as object) would not qualify. (Remember, the verb in the 2^nd clause in active, the verb in the first clause is passive.) Therefore if we take ‘iniquity’ to mean ‘[a consequence of] punishment’—such as the word means in Genesis 4:13 when Cain tells God his ‘[consequence of] punishment’ is too great to bear—verse 5 could be rendered as follows (granting all that we have thus far established):

“In [the consequence of] punishment was I brought forth/writhed, and in sin does my mother conceive me.”

An interpretive, amplified paraphrase (i.e., not a translation) may help to show what we mean here:

“In the midst of the consequence of punishment (as given to Eve and thus unto all future mothers, regarding childbirth) I was brought forth writhing (as syncratic with my mother’s writhing), and my mother conceived me while in a general state of sinfulness.”

This literal layer of meaning offers at least one additional observation regarding parallelism later in the psalm. Note the hyssop which is the carrier of atoning blood, a blood which in turn points to the blood of a righteous Christ who would become the second Adam—and how this essentially parallels David’s mother as also a carrier, but of a ‘perverse’ knowledge whose consequence is death and which bespeaks of the first Adam and his transgression.

One further observance should be made about both these layers of meaning, as well as the following (Messianic) layer of meaning which we will examine in a moment. The conjunction, “and,” connecting the two clauses of the verse has not been ignored. It is preserved in all three layers of meaning, so that the verse is preserved as a united whole.

Moving on, in the 3^rd (or Messianic) layer the first phrase (”In the consequence of punishment was I brought forth”) is taken to mean at least two things: 1) the Messiah was brought forth in the midst of Mary’s painful childbirth even as David was brought forth, though without the seed of the knowledge of good and evil because of the Messiah’s chronological priority to Adam and because of His virgin birth. Irony is evident here, since the Messiah went through pain but for the purpose of ultimately doing away with pain. 2) And very significantly, the Messiah was brought forth (by Pilate) after being subject to the consequence of punishment (which He bore as the Lamb of God); “In the consequence of punishment was I brought forth.” The famous phrase by Pilate, “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man!) comes to mind here, as Christ was brought before the crowd. The clause can also be seen as one in which the Son was brought forth by the Father, since it was the Father’s desire, not the Son’s, that the Son be sent into the world to die for the sins of the world. Note that Christ is in the passive mode in all such instances, even as the verb indicates [“…He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter…”. (Is. 53:7a)]. Here the remarkableness of the Hebrew Scriptures are seen, for within the same phrase are found the different layers of meaning, the sin of the sinner at one level, and the atonement of the Redeemer on another. One should note here that the same Hebrew word is used in the Old Testament for “sin” and “sin offering.” While yet David finds himself in the throes of confessing his sin, God already considers the Lamb brought forth from a woman’s womb, to ultimately be brought forth to suffer an atoning death for man.

Finally, consider the 2^nd clause (”and in sin did my mother conceive me”) in this 3^rd (Messianic) layer of meaning. Specifically, this clause goes to the point of rebuking the notion that the Messiah’s mother, Mary, would be without sin. This would explain why, at the Messianic level of Psalm 51:5’s textured meaning, the father is not in view, yet is, in fact, implied at the Davidic level of meaning. It goes without saying that the Immaculate Conception (the idea that Mary was herself conceived without sin, along with its implication of her acting as co-redeemer) has been one of the greatest heresies among those professing to be Christians.

Having grown up in the Evangelical faith, I understand that such a layered interpretation as suggested above for Psalm 51:5 will seem ‘a stretch.’ Yet certainly one reason it appears so is because Evangelicals have never really approached this psalm as the Jews do, who do not hold to a doctrine of ‘original sin.’ In fact, we have accepted the idea of original sin prima facie because the English rendering and interpretation of verse 5 has, frankly speaking, been drummed into our heads to a point of indoctrination apart from historical, grammatical, and contextual considerations, especially as regards the farther context of all the Bible (specifically Rom. 5:12ff). And so the average Evangelical quotes Psalm 51:5 as the coup de grace in any discussion about the doctrine of original sin and without certain essential exegetical knowledge of Romans 5. Thus he hardly suspects that in his own limited way he is employing the technique so often used by cultists—i.e., that of isolating some verse from the poetic books and performing a beheading of some important Christian doctrine—to rid, in his case, a proper understanding of the nature of man, and the Pauline view that sin is not passed from Adam upon his descendents.

Given, then, some of the latter arguments under this question for a Messianic layer of meaning, I do not see why this viewpoint could not be considered as legitimate, as coming alongside the other layers of meanings we have already observed.

Question:

You claim that all men are made in God’s image, yet Genesis implies that only Adam was made in God’s image. When Adam’s son, Seth, was born, the Bible says that Seth was born in Adam’s image. Doesn’t this mean that man’s free will must be lost, since Seth was not made in the image of God but merely in the image of Adam? Isn’t it correct, then, to say that Seth didn’t have the ability to choose good?

Answer:

Even if we granted the Calvinist’s assumption about Seth, it does not help the Calvinist to explain how Adam chose to sin. It simply moves the onus of the problem of evil from Seth to Adam. In fact, it seems more problematic for the Calvinist to have to explain how an unfallen man (Adam) could have chosen to do evil.²⁰⁴ Second, and to answer the point more directly, Seth was not merely made in the image of Adam but also in the image of God. The fact that persons during Noah’s time continued to be born in God’s image is the whole basis for God’s instruction to Noah about capital punishment in Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.“²⁰⁵ This statement authorizing capital punishment wouldn’t even make sense unless men were still made in the image of God. Thus God was making clear that, despite the sin of man, which brings divine judgment, man is still made in God’s image. The difference, of course, is that Seth was also born in Adam’s image, i e., with Adam’s acquired knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge that greatly distracted (not controlled) his focus while making choices.

¹²⁴This view is similar to Pelagius’s insofar as holding to the basic view that Adam was truly free, though in deference to Pelagius, it holds that man was not created mortal, even inheriting an effect besides physical death—i.e. the knowledge of good and evil (introduced in them as a seed of additional knowledge upon conception). Pelagius’s writings are mostly secondary sourced. Furthermore, someone has stated that Pelagius sometimes speaks of ‘meriting’ grace. If, in fact, Pelagius believed this, he was incorrect.

¹²⁵In Greek the word ‘fornication’ is pornea, lit. to sell, and in this context fornication means sexual intercourse apart from one’s spouse. When a person commits fornication in a marriage, that person has sold their matrimonial vow—a vow publicly understood to be self-sacrificial and chaste—for their own immoral pleasure.

The ‘pull’ of sin, however, is not the same for all men in the same circumstances. Much of this ‘pull’ depends on how strong a man’s conscience is, and how well he maintains it. If he has abstained from a particular sin, the ‘pull’ is generally less for that particular trial. Furthermore, not all pleasure is found in sins of commission. There is a kind of sinful pleasure that avoids pain, as when a man may omit doing something he ought to do, in order to avoid pain, hassle, inconvenience, etc.

¹²⁶Moreover, there are various forms of sexual sin that are not necessarily adultery, but ones in which a man may nevertheless act selfishly within a sexual context.

¹²⁷ One might suppose, from reading 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, that the death spoken of in Romans 5:12ff is likewise a physical, not spiritual, death. I Corinthians 15:21-22 reads: “For since death is through man, also through a Man is a resurrection of the dead. For as all die in Adam, so also all will be made alive in Christ.” But the contexts of 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 are significantly different. 1 Corinthians 15 is a lengthy discussion about physical resurrection, while Romans 5 is a segue (footnote cont. on p. 524) (continued from p. 452) between a prior discussion in Romans about guilt, condemnation, and reconciliation (Romans 1-4) and an upcoming discussion about Christian experience (Romans 6-8). Christ’s physical death and resurrection in Romans 1-7 speaks primarily to the spiritual relevance they have to man. Not until Romans 8 does Paul begin to speak in more detail about the redemption of the believer’s body and his glorification. Further, if physical death is the kind Paul alludes to in Romans 5:12, then he is also stating that we physically die because of sin, but obviously such a statement would explain nothing about why animals and insects also die. Moreover, God told Adam that if he ate the forbidden fruit he would die in that day, but Adam did not physically die until 930 years later. While it is true that Adam obtained the sentence of physical death in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit, that is a different thing than death itself. Thus the Adamic death spoken of in Romans 5:12 ought to be assumed to be a spiritual death unless the context has in primary view the physical resurrection, which it does not. Also, the physical resurrection context of 1 Corinthians 15 arguably has in view one of the most dramatic statements Christ ever made in the gospels about the physical resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (Jn 5:28-29). The point here is that all physically died because Adam had the power to bring death, even as Christ has such power that one day he will bring to life every human who has died. Adam’s power, then, was of physical and consequential effect; but though Adam’s choice added to us an additional knowledge we otherwise would not have had, it determined nothing of the moral content of who we are, anymore than the power of Christ determines the moral content of those whose bodies are raised.

Furthermore, a careful reading of the immediate context surrounding Romans 5:12 likewise leads us to conclude that Paul is talking about spiritual death (see main text above). In the two sections sandwiching Romans 5:12-21 (Romans 5:1-11 and Romans 6:1ff) Paul speaks about the believer’s identification with Christ’s death and resurrection, and together these show that Paul was moving toward a discussion of the believer’s spiritual life by the time he would reach Romans 6. This is not to say that the resurrection of the believer is ever far from Paul’s mind in those chapters prior to 6 (including Romans 5), for the ramifications of the believer’s spiritual life is solely dependent on the physical resurrection of Christ. But the primary address here in the first seven chapters of Romans is the spiritual condition of the world (unreconciled and reconciled man). As Romans 6 unfolds, the believer in this world is urged to forsake disobedience (i.e., as implied and archetyped in the disobedient one, Adam, whose actions led to sin’s entrance into the world) and to follow after obedience (as archetyped in the obedient One, Christ, whose obedience makes man’s reconciliation with God, and therefore eternal life, possible).

This fact of the spiritual element is also in view when Paul states in Romans 5:6 that Christ died for us when we were weak (lit. without strength). Paul is talking about spiritual weakness, not physical weakness, evidenced in every man’s failure to commend his love toward sinful men in the same (neighborly) way God Himself has demonstrated. Thus man has failed to live up to the Neighborly Command (the golden rule). That is, while some men might even dare to die for a relatively good man, no man has loved sinful man as God has, who commended His love toward us while we were yet sinners. Thus God’s love makes possible man’s spiritual reconciliation and the glorying of that fact (Romans 10:11-12) before God (i.e., the appropriate response of a saved man in recognizing God’s great work in his life, which in turn informs his walk as a believer in this world).

Finally, as an interesting side note here, while 1 Corinthians 15 uses the phrase “en tw Adam” i.e., “in Adam,” to signify the physical mortality that attended Adam in the day he ate the forbidden fruit, i.e., a physical mortality inevitably passed to us, the phrase “in Adam” never technically occurs in the Romans 5 passage in which spiritual death is in view.*

*Note below John Calvin’s statement, attempting to refute the Pelagian claim that if children inherit from Adam his spiritually degenerate nature, then children begotten from Christian parents ought to inherit their spiritually regenerate nature: Says Calvin:

The Pelagian cavil, as to the improbability of children deriving corruption from pious parents, whereas, they ought rather to be sanctified by their purity, is easily refuted. Children come not by spiritual regeneration but carnal descent. Accordingly, as Augustine says, “Both the condemned unbeliever and the acquitted believer beget offspring not acquitted but condemned, because the nature which begets is corrupt.”

Our question of Calvin is a straightforward one: Where in the Bible is it suggested that “the nature which begets,” i.e., Calvin’s reference to the “carnal descent,”-the sexual passion and the sexual act which Calvin implicitly connects with degenerate spirituality-is a morally corrupting act? Or, especially, why now the dichotomy between the “spiritual” and the “carnal,” when the sexual activity of the parent with its spiritual effects served Calvin so well, so long as it was Adam’s sexuality (and nature) and not the believer’s? [Note that Calvin here does not make the argument one might expect, by supposing that Adam’s parentage is the only one worthy of consideration. This is clear in his quotation of Augustine, for the word “beget” in “beget offspring” is clearly defined as the sexual reproduction of “both the condemned unbeliever and the acquitted believer,” and so when Augustine proceeds to speak of “the nature which begets is corrupt,” he can only be speaking of the begetting which results from ALL human sexual reproduction, not just Adam’s. Calvinists would presumably attempt to solve this problem by claiming that Adam’s begetting (in the moral-transfer sense) courses through the begetting acts of all his descendents. But note that this assumption introduces and conflates the moral being of Adam with the being of his descendents. But, of course, such an idea, if interesting to some, has one vital flaw-it has no scriptural support.] Or where now in Calvin is there an appeal to the opposite proof-texted Scripture that would say that if any man be in Christ he is a new creation wherein ALL THINGS are new? But apparently for Calvin “all things” includes all things except the “nature which begets.” Put another way, Calvin’s assigning of a degenerate spirituality in the course of “carnal” descent” is mere caprice, since a negative OR positive moral status could have been proposed either way, as long as ALL THINGS did not include physical depravity.In light of Calvin’s insistence on this state of things (inherited spiritual depravity), I’ll admit I found it amusing that, regarding the patristic discussion of Original Sin, Calvin himself admits that there is

nothing more remote from common apprehension, than that the fault of one should render all guilty, and so become a common sin. This seems to be the reason why the oldest doctors of the church only glance obscurely at the point, or, at least, do not explain it so clearly as it required.

In fact, none of the early church fathers prior to Augustine supported the idea of Original Sin, which is why Augustine has been credited with recovering it (that is, by Calvinists). Apparently, it just never dawned on Calvin that his views were not sympathetic to any of the earliest church fathers. Indeed, as the pre-Augustinian writings demonstrate, the early fathers consistently repudiated the idea that man of his own nature could not choose God. And so, by his inferring an early fathers’ puzzlement, rather than their disapproval, Calvin blithely continues his refutation of Pelagianism.

It gets worse. Calvin’s appeal to Romans 5:12, Psalm 51:5, and 1 Corinthians 15:22-the three passages he cites to prove his argument for Original Sin-are all stated briefly and without any analysis of the original languages or serious examination of their contexts. He ignores that the overriding question is of physical resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. He also ignores the absence of prepositional pointers in Ps. 51:5, whose presence might have led some measure of credence to his position (depending on their placement); and of course he ignores his own kind of proof-texting from Psalms when it would tell against his own position, such as the converse notion of original perfection as found in “Thou art my God from my mother’s belly.” In brief, all his expositions are given short shrift. (See Institutes: Vol. 2; Chpt. 1, pts. 5-6.) In fact, because Calvin supposes that Romans 5:12 in context so obviously states the matter of Original Sin, his exposition of this crucial verse and its context extends to the magnanimous amount in English translation to all of 150 words, before he declares: “In this clear light of truth I cannot see any need of a longer or more laborious proof”. Indeed, we should all be such diligent students of such pivotal scriptures as Calvin. Small wonder that he and his followers have never seen the correlative conjunctive format of Romans 5:12. I think, then, the matter of this most crucial section of the Institutes can be succinctly drawn up in a single observation about Calvin’s reliance on polemics at the expense of proper presuppositions which could have led him to proper exegesis-note that one can hardly state Calvin’s position in less words than Calvin’s own ‘exposition.’

¹²⁸In the case of persons who have reached the age of accountability (i.e., perhaps better termed—those who have ‘entered the period of accountability’), physical death is also warranted upon their own spiritual death once they choose to sin. Prior to the point where a person has sinned during his age of accountability, he is subject to physical death as a consequence of Adam’s sin, just like insects and animals. [Sidebar: Someone might object here that Paul’s use of the phrase “children of wrath” in Ephesians 2:3 implies original sin, and that therefore we are wrong to contend for an age of accountability. However, the word ‘children’ in the phrase, “children of wrath” is tekna,not nerios, denoting children that were older than infants, and thus presumably candidates for accountability. As for nerios, I hasten to add that babies and all persons are conceived in the image of God and therefore not equitable to animals, to be regarded, or, dispatched (i.e., in abortion), as such.]

As an additional note, here, consider how pre-accountable persons, in the paradigm we are suggesting, gives force to God’s argument with Jonah in Jonah 4. Pre-accountable persons would not have had any more guilt (or, for the sake of argument, even imputed guilt) than the gourd over which Jonah had compassion. Thus Jonah could not have argued (even hypocritically) that such e.g., infants ought to be destroyed as having inherited Adam’s guilt. God’s rhetorical inquiry into Jonah’s attitude put the matter clear. If Jonah, as a creature, wanted the right to have compassion over a plant he did not create, then by what reason should God, as the Creator of all things, not be entitled to have compassion over pre-accountable persons who had no more guilt than the gourd over which Jonah had compassion, and whom God had made in His image?

An objection might be raised here as to how God would be right in bringing judgment against the Ninevites, since it would have involved the death of scores of thousands of infants who were not guilty. Technically speaking, however, if the Ninevites had not repented, divine judgment would not have been against Ninevite infants but against the maturer Ninevites themselves as accountable persons. The point here is that God recognizes the stewardship of the Ninevites over the welfare of their infants, even as, for example, God (despite His warnings) recognized the stewardship of the Egyptians over the welfare of their cattle whom He nevertheless did not spare in the 5^th and 7^th plagues, even as He did not spare the firstborn of Egyptian sons and beasts in the 10^th plague regardless of their age. There is, sometimes, the suffering of the blameless, whether of humans or animals in this life, because of the actions of others. (Many humans, old and young, die in a just war on the just side, for example. Further, Job’s children died because of Satan’s accusations, which incited God to allow Job’s trial against God’s wishes.) But concerning this point about stewardship, even the story of Noah and the Flood is suggestive here; for even as Noah was found faithful among men and escaped divine judgment, so too does it appear that God found it fitting to spare a single representative pair of animals as under the stewardship of Noah. Thus even as Noah’s generations would continue from himself and his wife, so too would each pair of animals beget after their own kind in their generations. In this sense (of stewardship) Noah mirrors Adam, though Adam’s stewardship had the greater effect of bringing physical depravity upon all human persons and all creatures (i.e., all sentient creation).

¹²⁹The subject of animals and morality is, in fact, a difficult one. The serpent in the garden was cursed, which would imply that it had disobeyed God. (Indeed, God said to the serpent, “Because thou has done this…”) For apart from disobedience there should have been no divine judgment, yet judgment was pronounced upon the snake to crawl on its belly and eat dust. (It has since been observed by scientists that snakes have the physiology that suggests that at one time they could have walked.) As for Eve not acting surprised that the serpent talked to her, it should be noted that Josephus claims that “all the living creatures had one language” at the time of creation (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1 Chapter 1). Balaam’s ass also talked, God having loosed her tongue, and note that the ass understood that she was being mistreated and thus had a degree of moral understanding (a degree of ability to distinguish right from wrong). Admittedly, the various conundrums that arise in trying to explain how animals might have a moral sense is difficult. Nor do I see any past theological system within Evangelicalism that has bothered about such questions. Perhaps the answer is in the fact (and this indeed is a fact) that animals, though they are creatures, are not made in the image of God. This fact may be deduced from Genesis 9:3-6, in which God gives permission to Noah to eat every living creature, while on the other hand He states that the killing of man is only allowed in cases of capital punishment. In other words, if animals were made in the image of God, then Noah would not have been allowed by God to kill them for food. Arguably, however, animals have a soul (defined here as an emotional and mental self). If they have a spirit (and I believe they do) it is not one made in the image of God (for God made persons unique in this regard). Personally, I would grant that animals are sustained past their present life here on earth, and that their bodies will one day be resurrected by God apart from any consideration regarding eternal guilt. Thus I believe that animals have an eternal spirit, but not one that is subject unto eternal liability (at least not after the manner of punishment to which man is subject).

As to what it means for a person ‘to be made in the image of God,’ I can only offer a partial answer, with the caution that what I suggest here is an answer based on what it seems to me the answer could not be. By default, then, it seems that man is accountable unto eternal liability for his actions, based on his being a God-created form in which he makes ex nihilio eternity-based decisions (utilizing a higher level of knowledge than that possessed by animals) about the trustworthiness of God. Man, then, occupies a realm higher than the animals.

Animals, on the other hand, appear to act within a realm of lesser accountability in which their actions may have consequences—though of a lower degree [owing in part to many (I do not say all ) actions being born of instinct] and as one limited (it would appear) to divine judgment regarding its earthly life. (By ‘instinct’ we mean thoughts which the animal brings into existence ex nihilio, wherein each thought is supposed, or accepted and properly recognized, prima facie as reality, upon the same instant that the thought itself is brought ex nihilio.) Yet in this latter regard the same is presumably true of the beginning of thought in any of us as created persons, whose first thought in each of us must instinctually involve the granted and proper assumption of our own personal existence. But to return our thoughts to animals and their accountability, the divine judgment upon the serpent in the Garden appears to be of the limited kind restricted to its (this?) earthly life. The chief difference in animal behavior between now and the time of Christ’s future kingdom, that is, between the current practice of certain animals killing other animals for food, versus the future state of affairs when the lion will lay down with the lamb, would seem to be 1) the current presence of the Devil (and presumably the demonic realm) upon earth, whose presence may have a general negative affect on the animals in a way not fully understood by us, but whose presence shall be banished during the future rule of Christ for a thousand years, and 2) the magnanimous, life-giving provisions which can only be possible in a world governed by Christ. For apart from the reign of Christ—a time when the earth shall be full of the Lord’s glory—it is hard to imagine under what circumstances, generally speaking, the lion would be content to lay down with the lamb. One explanation for why animals may kill each other for food may be found in the post-Flood condition of the Earth. Since the time of the Flood, the Earth’s ratio of minerals in the soil has been destroyed, a fact which may suggest why animals seek other means to obtain the minerals they need (such as killing and eating other animals). Indeed, even man was given permission to eat animal meat after the Flood. Exactly what in animals will sense this change of the Lord’s rule, so that they will live peaceably with each other, is beyond any description I can provide, though the knowledge in animals of the Lord’s presence may perhaps be inferred from the Bible’s statement that even the raven’s young cry out to God for food, or again, that God instructed the ravens to feed Elijah, and furthermore, that God sent his angel to shut the mouths of lions (perhaps by simple command). In short, animals (and perhaps all living creatures) appear to be aware of God in some elementary sense.

The difference in degree of animals’ accountability raises the additional question of how pre-accountable humans, who may not even know their left hand from their right, would still fit into the ‘made in the image of God’ category that is unique to humans. The answer would seem to be thus—that pre-accountable humans, like all humans, are made in the image of God with the future certainty that they will make an eternity-based choice about God’s word. Even aborted babies presumably come (immediately?) into a state like that original state of Adam and the unfallen angels prior to Lucifer’s rebellion, insofar as being able to exercise choice in a meaningful way. For eternity does not nullify choice. But as for how the image of God is present in an infant, when that infant has not yet entered his probationary period of discernment, is difficult to say, though perhaps the answer is that upon conception God recognizes that the person conceived will someday have the capability of making a choice unto eternal liability, even if it that choice occurs after this present earthly life. Again, it is difficult to say. Nevertheless, this image of God is present in persons even upon their conception, and makes humans “of more value than many sparrows,” despite at this point the conscience’s inactivity (or relative inactivity) within such persons.

¹³⁰It appears that animal discernment takes place apart from any awareness of nakedness, since animals do not know they are naked. Again, note that the serpent was punished for its act in the Garden, which suggests something of accountability. But, arguably, its punishment even then was limited to its life on this earth. A further question is whether they will have life after their life on this present earth. Although I am aware of the key passages used to claim that animals do not experience an afterlife, I am not convinced that the Bible really supports this interpretation. I would, however, grant that they certainly do not have a spirit which is under eternal condemnation (as we would understand that term relevant to unsaved man and fallen angels), or that they need redemption from sin of such eternal consequence. Assuming that animals would not have died if Adam had not sinned, I hold that, because animals die in this life as under the stewardship of Adam, so too has Christ’s resurrection arguably made it possible for all creatures to be restored to their former state of physical life according to the general and future restorative plan which God has for all creation. Christ has not yet exercised this right over what He has now positionally accomplished by His life, death, and resurrection. Indeed, it would seem of little solace to us believers today who are pet owners, if (granting the future physical immortality of animals) the only animals granted physical immortality are those living at the time when Christ shall vanquish death itself. For of what legitimate anticipation did the past creation share, to which Paul alluded, if that old creation waited in vain for the redemption of believers’ physical bodies? (see Rom. 8:19-23). The argument that animals do not have eternal spirits, and that therefore they cannot experience resurrection, is to me a forced argument, since it assumes, without biblical support, that only created things which have the capacity to obey or disobey unto eternal human or angelic consequence (by categorical default, a liability of persons) is that category of creatures which can experience a physical, mental, and emotional afterlife. After all, presumably, the animals would have been physically immortal had Adam not sinned. So, while I would contend that animals are under the stewardship of Christ after this present life of theirs, they are nevertheless not made in the image of God, and therefore not to be valued at the same level of humans (though even in regards to this lower level of value, the righteous man is to regard the life of his beast, i.e., presumably meant here as that beast that serves him in working the field or the beast that serves him as companion). As for the category of angels, it is true they also have consciences and wills as humans do; but as to this higher realm of beings and their exact nature in regards to the image of God, I am not much prepared to speak.

At any rate, until the believer dies (or is raptured), he carries within himself the knowledge of good and evil which Adam gained by disobedience. As for men who never repent and believe in Christ, it appears that they shall always have the knowledge of good and evil even after death.

¹³¹“Righteousness” is biblically defined, in terms of pertaining to pre-Fall man, as choosing consistently the path of obedience over time to the satisfaction of God. A person, to offer an analogy here, may be on the highway toward New York, but if he takes an exit leading south toward Atlantic City and travels that road into Atlantic City (by analogy, disobeys), he will not reach New York. Even so, Adam desired, at the first, to commune with God along the road toward belief, and trusted God temporarily, but at length he forsook his prior ‘consistency’ which was short of that consistency which God accounts for true belief. Nowhere in the Bible are Adam or Eve given any moral designation prior to the Fall, such as “innocent,” “sinless,” “righteous,” etc. Righteousness is defined, in terms of post-Fall man [i.e., the person who has committed wrong unto eternal liability (sinned)] to be the ongoing belief in Christ, who is the man’s Substitute for righteousness—a belief which shrinks not back to the point of the perdition of unbelief.

¹³² Perhaps someone will object that my introduction of the term ‘Adamic seed of the knowledge of good and evil’ is a doublethink, that is, my attempt to say that an infant is born with knowledge, yet not knowledge. Yet while I confess freely that there is mystery about the Adamic seed, and how through man it transmits the knowledge of good and evil, it seems to me that this mystery is the approximate same as that of any knowledge at all, such as that seed of knowledge which Cain and Abel would have had as infants, had not their parents ever sinned. In other words, from where comes knowledge, wherein one day an infant or child does not know his right hand from his (footnote cont. on p. 528) (continued from p. 455) left, to knowing his right hand from his left? For presumably this general knowledge would have been the same for infants regardless of whether the Fall had occurred. In other words, what, in age progression, happens ex nihilio in the person, that he should cause his knowledge to come into being? Perhaps for this reason Calvinists seek a Divine Cause behind a person’s every thought and act. That such an approach leads to Monism we have already established, and since the idea of Monism is false, this approach is found wholly unsatisfying to the one attempting (through an honest use of language) to preserve God and man as Creator and creature, respectively.

¹³³To reach the age of accountability unto eternal liability, one must be able to decide upon some moral point that God regards as worthy of eternal consequence. And for one to so decide upon some moral point, one must often first deliberate. Presumably, a person sometimes creates thoughts as judgments, though in other cases he may hold other thoughts apart from judgment while he deliberates upon what judgments he shall assign to these thoughts. In the matter of deciding to take Christ as Savior, one must repent—that is, have a change of mind. This choice by the sinner about whether to repent or not, can only happen with deliberation upon these two options. And one cannot contemplate two things in the same instant, therefore it would seem that deliberation precedes choice, at least in the case of repentance.

¹³⁴Post-Adamic man in his experience simply has nothing to compare to Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall experience. The irony for us today is that we can only know about the pre-Fall state of our original parents in a kind of textbook way, unless, perhaps, we have some memory of our pre-accountable period (though even then, this would hardly be equivalent to having the kind of general mental capacity which Adam experienced upon his creation).

But as for the question as to why Adam and Eve would be tempted without the vicarious knowledge that there would be pleasure in sin, we have only to see that it was the Devil who provided that vicarious knowledge. One might say, for example, that Adam and Eve had a textbook knowledge about the potential pleasure in eating the forbidden fruit. For Adam and Eve’s anticipated pleasure in eating forbidden fruit would have been restricted to the pleasure they had already come to know from eating other fruits. In this sense their textbook (theoretical) knowledge about the potential pleasure in eating the forbidden fruit was experience-based, i.e., on the other fruits they had eaten. (In other words, there was no knowledge of the pleasure in the act of sinning, i.e., in being selfish.) Incidentally, this fact of Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall, textbook knowledge of sin puts the whole matter of the choice God set before them very simply—i.e., ‘cut-and-dried.’

So, there was no reason, before the Devil came along, for Adam and Eve to think that the pleasure possible in eating the forbidden fruit would be any more or less than that which they naturally found in other fruits. But Satan’s presentation changed all that (because Adam and Eve allowed it to). For the Devil provided vicariously the (by definition, intensified, higher, etc.) knowledge about good and evil which Adam and Eve had not yet come to acquire. In fact, the Devil invoked the strategy that has since become the principal, imperative rule of all ‘good’ advertising—i.e., build desire in the potential consumer by trying to make him think that he’s missing something, can ‘belong,’ can have more power which in turn will bring him more pleasure, etc., all of which, we note, is true in a distorted or temporary sense. Picture a 35-year old father ‘enlightening’ his 11-year old son about all the possible pleasures in sex—where to buy dirty magazines, where the brothels are, etc.—to get an idea of what I mean. Simply put, such facts for the 11-year old are not helpful to know. It’s like a man driving down the highway and seeing a newly erected ‘adult’ bookstore; i.e., a fact he didn’t know prior to seeing the building. Let us say he doesn’t go in. Let us even say he has never visited such a bookstore. Alas, he will find the mere presence of the building a distraction anyway. (Of course, in real life all men miss the mark in various areas, if not regarding this kind, then of some other kind.)

But while we’re on the subject of sinful pleasure, let me add this—I cannot help thinking that the Devil began his pitch to Eve with a wry, ‘knowing laugh’ that spoke volumes along with what he actually did say (indeed, laughter always gets peoples’ attention):

“Yeh, (laugh) really? Did God say that! [Why, I can just imagine that ‘ol Bugger trying that trick again. You know, He just wants you to serve him! By the way, let me tell you what you’ll gain by eating this fruit—you know, the gain He’s not telling you about…”]

At any rate, Eve allowed her natural desire for fruit to be roused in the process of deception, until she desired the forbidden fruit. Sadly, she then chose to act in accordance with this desire. Adam, too, though not deceived, also sinned, following his newly roused desire until he committed a simple act of straight-forward rebellion.

¹³⁵The Bible tells us that man was made lower (in form) than the angels.

¹³⁶The conscience is not the same thing as, nor did it become (or assimilate into itself), the knowledge of good and evil. Certainly, the Fall put the will and the conscience in catastrophic circumstances, but that is a different thing than saying that they are birthed as sin. Paul says in Romans 2:15 that a Gentile’s conscience either accused or excused him, and we note that this was the case even though the Gentile was without the Mosaic Law. Had the conscience been corrupted upon the Fall, then presumably it would have ceased to properly bear witness to the Gentile; yet the Gentile remained a law unto himself. Thus the conscience must be a good thing. Also, 1 Timothy 4:1-2 says that in the latter days some people would “depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” Thus from this statement too we may deduce that the conscience itself is a good thing, since the searing of the conscience is described as a bad thing. Again, note that it is the searing of the conscience, not the conscience itself, which is the bad thing. That is, if the knowledge of good and evil were merely the conscience fallen; then we would hardly expect Paul to lament over its seared state. Indeed, hypothetically speaking, the searing of a fallen (i.e. totally, which is to say, utterly, depraved) ‘conscience’ would in that case suggest something good.

¹³⁷The Calvinist, B.B. Warfield, is quoted by Loraine Boettner as stating that God creates the very thoughts and intents of the heart. This is a way of denying that man creates his own thoughts and will. This is Calvinism at its essence, a denial of man’s ability to birth his own thoughts and decisions apart from God. This is why Calvinism ends up as spiritual Monism veiled in Evangelical language.

¹³⁸More properly speaking, the Devil also may be represented through the principalities and powers of the air, against whom we wrestle in the Spirit.

¹³⁹A man who, hypothetically, is totally against God, is arguably one who has defiled his conscience to a point where the thoughts he brings into being ex nihilio are, in the same instant of their being, also accusations against God.

¹⁴⁰The term ’sin nature’ is itself understood variously by Evangelicals, from being a mere inclination to commit sin, to being de facto guilt in Adam. Generally, the understanding among Evangelicals is toward the latter, as held by Luther and Calvin, i.e., that which this book refutes. It must be noted that some theologians, such as John Wesley, have attempted to redefine the term ’sin nature’ to be something softer in effect than that held by Calvin and Luther. However, this has merely added confusion to the matter. This is because Wesley’s hybrid approach is that of the Arminian who in fact holds to the same dialectical definitions as Calvinists (or at least as moderate Calvinists) though with relatively more concession to human freedom in their verbal and written statements. We are relatively glad; but thus the wry joke: What’s the difference between a Calvinist and an Arminian?—Answer: Blood pressure. Thus Wesley might appear more congenial, but the ’softer’ side of defining original sin still retains its dialectical characteristic. Thus Wesley (below) makes the following statement about sin, in which he claims we are continually ‘inclined’ to it (thus implying a fallen nature that is not in possession of sin de facto), yet also claims (in a preceding clause) that he holds human sin to be “very far gone from original righteousness” [(emphasis mine) and thus Wesley implies a fallen nature that is moral ]. That is, Wesley, while properly understanding that the Pelagians were wrong to think that Adam’s sin was merely a bad example which had no effect on his descendents [including an effect on knowledge, much less mortality, as Pelagius (reportedly) believed man was created mortal], fails to avoid the dialectic, since he speaks of inclination but also holds to a ‘departure’ which was not merely of prudent knowledge, but of morality, i.e., implied in his term, ‘original righteousness.’ And yet even here Wesley’s statement is confusing, for what does he mean by original righteousness? For in fact Adam was not created righteous (nor in fact unrighteous) nor obtained righteousness during his probation in the Garden. Nevertheless, Wesley states:

“Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is endangered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.”

Thus the Arminian, though he holds to dialecticism, may presumably be more readily judged (that is, inferred by his readers/listeners) to be a Christian on the basis that his dialecticism is a more gentle back-and-forth rock than the violent one of the Calvinist, since the Calvinistic apologetic stresses (unwittingly) literary deconstruction* (see two paragraphs down). But a Calvinist who (hypothetically, at least) would be so extreme that he has never made any confession (to God) to receive Christ, would be judged by the Scriptures to hold another gospel and therefore is not saved. In the end (besides the Calvinist himself), I suppose only God can know what a Calvinist understands by the terms he uses (though even here the Body presumably may have the mind of the Spirit of Christ regarding the matter). For example, the Westminster Confessions’ terms, God, and man (as these terms relate to their chief statement about the absolute sovereignty of God and the freedom of man) can only be inferred by the reader to be meaningless, according to the proper principles of logic and language. Yet, hypothetically, two persons could profess to believe the above Westminster statement, yet one be a Christian while the other not. For example, Calvinist A might truly believe (as God would judge it) in human freedom because at some level he sufficiently believes and confesses his need of Christ. In short, he understands to sufficient degree both what it means to receive Christ, and believes in Christ. Arguably, confession (according to Scripture) must be made before two or three witnesses for the confession to be established, yet even here one might argue that the Persons of the Trinity would suffice for that condition if the man has understood God’s message and earnestly prayed to God to be saved. Calvinist A, despite his theology, would thus be truly born again, because, though his heart condemns him in his subsequent and erroneous doctrine about the gospel, and especially about the nature of God, God is greater than his heart, and thus the heart’s condemnation spoken of must be the kind of present judgment in which double-minded Christians find themselves, i.e., a divine judgment which makes the believer subject to chastisement. That said, God knows the believer’s deception has occurred subsequent to his conversion. I say ‘deception,’ not ‘disbelief,’ lest someone were to mistakenly infer from my use of ‘disbelief’ (and despite the context of my preceding argument) the meaning of permanent deception and/or confession that would belie his true state as a believer no longer under condemnation with the world for unbelief. Thus God is greater than Calvinist A’s heart and cannot deny Himself, the Persons of the Godhead being true and bearing witness to each other of the believer’s de facto salvation, and so Calvinist A is de facto saved. Whenever in this book I talk of the Calvinist who has made terms meaningless, I mean it in the sense of linguistically meaningless to his hearers, that is, hearers who cannot really know what is in the heart of the Calvinist. Thus by giving Calvinist-A his label as a Calvinist, we are referring to his present confession of Calvin’s belief in the absolute sovereignty of God which he holds in doublethink.

Let us consider the remaining, and hypothetical, example, i.e., Calvinist B, a man who in his heart has always held the dialectical statement of the Westminster Confession’s statement (see above) to be true in its dialecticism. That is, there has never been a time when he understood and confessed his need to God and received Christ as Savior. [I hasten to add that proper confession always involves proper (true) belief. When the Bible states that “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness,” the term ‘belief,’ used in Romans 4:3 implies, by inclusion, confession to God.] Thus, if such a man as Calvinist B has not believed unto salvation, that is, according to the most elementary sense in which it is understood that Abraham believed, Calvinist B is not saved. The problem, then, for readers and listeners of a Calvinist is this: how can readers/hearers really know exactly what the Calvinist believes in his heart about the theological terms he uses? In other words, does he use his terms as Calvinist A, or Calvinist B? Is he a wheat or a tare? And if a wheat, does he lately appear as a tare? And if, in any of these cases, he is a leader within a local Body—indeed, even if he is a renowned Church father who has set the course of ‘Christian’ apologetics for many centuries—what impact will his confession have on the clarity of the gospel and doctrine both inside and outside the four walls of the church?

*(from two paragraphs above) One of the problems I have with Wesley’s quote is that one wonders exactly what he means by “inclined,” “naturally endangered [as Adam’s offspring],” “corruption of the nature of every man,” etc. While Arminians differ from one another about “racial guilt,” by which is meant that all men sin IN Adam, the general belief about what “inclined,” etc., means, seems to be answered by the Methodist doctrine of “prevenient garce.” “Prevenient” is an older word that simply means “preceding,” and the idea here is that man cannot prepare and turn Himself to God apart from God’s preceding grace. Yet I find even this definition confusing, because God has always been graceful upon the world, and so we must ask what specifically the Arminian has in view? The answer, specifically then, is the will of man. Thus as one Arminian seemed to describe it to me, man is able to reject Christ, while not being “entirely free” in that rejecting, but not free to accept Christ. I find at least two faults with this view. 1) the term “man” becomes too vague to maintain proper individuation. In other words, through subtle language he implied that man’s rejection is not all of man. But then, we must ask, what is “man” in the phrase “man rejecting Christ”? Therefore, the thing that becomes lost in the doctrine of prevenient grace is any proper definition of the will of man. For God’s role in the will of man is the creation of its form, never its content. Once we suggest that God has to turn man this way or that way because of man’s “depravity,” and that this divine activity is more than mere thought-presentation, we are merely “Amen-ing” B.B. Warfield’s statement that God creates the very thoughts and intents of the heart,” and that man CANNOT come. So, while the Arminian thinks that God “enables” man so that he can choose in either direction, either for or against Christ, I think that “prevenient grace” becomes “irresistible grace” if people only author ‘choices’ of one thing (i.e., rejection of Christ). I suspect the Arminian has convinced himself that God either creates anew or restores(?) the form of man’s will to a point where man can make the either/or choice (at least in regard to Christ). But then of course the question remains: What was the will prior to the either/or? Only a ‘will’ that had a ‘choice’ of one thing in regard to Christ, and so the will was not a will. Such a definition, if not as perniciously pursued as that Reformed brand by the Calvinist, is still irrational. So, let me offer at least one thing from the Bible to counter this idea of “prevenient grace.” It is that Christ answers the Law. Let us insist on that. Therefore when one Arminian wrote me to say:

“So the issue, consequent to the fall, is not so much attaining moral righteousness by way of the law but our response to the offered remedy of our sin, and the surrendering to the reality that we need God, thereby attaining righteousness through Him,”

I answered that the issue is exactly about attaining moral righteousness by way of the law, though in Christ.* Therefore, if a man is eternally liable through his rejection of the law, why would he not also have the will present within him to make choices regarding ALL OF THAT which pertains to the law? And let us note here that Christ does in fact pertain to the law; He answers the law. Indeed, all men (Adam, Christ, et al.) have answered the law, either for or against it, and continue to do so, since their knowledge of law makes relevant both sides of the choice equation. For there is no such thing as a one side choice equation. Either one has knowledge of law and therefore choice, or no knowledge and no choice. Now, readers, granted, neither we nor the heavenly angels, who desire to look into how salvation was accomplished for us, understand exactly how our salvation was accomplished; but again, I think we must insist that if a man has the moral awareness enough to be eternally liable to that which pertains to the Law, then surely it follows that he must also understand that the law which he chose not to keep could be kept by another person other than himself—that one could satisfy the Law, be him Christ, or someone else (though Christians know that no one else besides Christ will). Of course, the sinner must have simple knowledge about the historical Christ to make a decision about Christ. But that is a matter of knowledge, not “enablement” of the will, which is what Arminians seem to claim. While I would grant the brute fact that God in all cases is the initiator of relationship with us, this does not mean that man, in his nature, is disabled in his will, such that he cannot choose Christ, that is, so long as he has simple knowledge of Christ.. Indeed, I see nothing in Genesis 3 or Romans 5 that would indicate that though man used his choice to separate himself from the Creator, his will was therefore rendered diminished or annihilated in some part. And so, while in one sense we may properly call man’s separation from God “the fall,” there is another sense in which we must recognize that it was a climb—into a special, inner, exalted, or higher knowledge. For that is the lexical meaning of the Hebrew word “knowledge” in Genesis 3 in the phrase “the knowledge of good and evil.” The word is a somewhat different (though derived) word than the more common word used for “knowledge” in the Old Testament. So, nothing in Genesis 3 suggests that man’s will was diminished but rather that his knowledge was increased. And moral awareness is according to knowledge, and we know that knowledge is wont to puff up. So, while it is evident that man sins, no act of sinning by man at any time upon any point has ever been inevitable. To state or imply, as I think Arminians are wont to do, of the nature of man as absent the influence necessary for man to have a real choice to choose either for or against Christ, is either to confuse “influence” when they mean “knowledge,” OR to define the “influence” which they claim IS present in man in a way not normally understood—to wit, as an influence that cannot be resisted, hence, man’s depravity. For note in this latter regard that for Arminians to speak of “influence” that can ONLY lead to “unbelief” (a ‘choice’ of one thing) is not to speak of something resistible but deterministic in a system where there is no choice at all. So then, such a definition of “influence” as deterministic can only be reached through an ahistorical lexical use of the word, and is therefore special pleading .

¹Incidentally, this Arminian next replied that he agreed that the issue was exactly this, though he continued to maintain that prevenient grace was needed to accept Christ.

¹⁴¹An interesting term, since Adam’s sin resulted in him and his descendents obtaining the knowledge of good and evil along with aging, i.e., the sign of eventual physical death. It would appear that our possession of the knowledge of good and evil is what accounts for aging (i.e., the kind of aging present in fallen Adam, not pre-fallen Adam).

¹⁴²An ellipsis can be enormously important to observe, and the failure to note its occurrence can have grave ramifications. Calvinist James White, for example, fails to note an ellipsis in John 6:44, and consequently he argues that this verse teaches the doctrine of Irresistibility. Thus he contends that, because the word ‘him’ in John 6:44 must refer to the same object (since it occurs together in the same verse, i.e., in John 6:44), this repeated word (’him’) proves that God only draws those whom he shall raise [in bodily resurrection unto eternal life] at the last day. It follows, argues White in effect, that because all men are not saved, therefore God must not draw all men, i.e., “No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him; yet I will raise him up on the last day.” [I have put a semicolon, not a colon, between the two main independent clauses, and translated kai as yet, since arguably the thought is that the Son has committed Himself to the welfare of those whom the Father will successfully draw, though no man had similarly and diligently sought God. (Remember, there was no punctuation in the original New Testament autographa. Also, kai can take the meaning of but, depending on the context). But the reader should note that Christ speaks here by way of an implied ellipsis, assuming that his hearers will understand the point, i.e., that those whom He raises in the last day will obviously be those who responded to his drawing. Remember that the word ‘can’ (Gr. dunamai) in John 6:44 means will, and that Jesus is merely saying that no man powers himself to (i.e., chooses to) come to Him “unless the Father draws him…” That is, this is not because the man theoretically cannot come, but because he will not come (see p. 186, footnote 50 ). (Sidenote: not all Greek scholars, e.g. Carl Conrad, accept for verbs like dunamai the designation “deponent” verbs. In fact, he says that ” “deponent” is about as useless a grammatical term as has ever been invented,” and prefers the term “middle-passive” verbs. Keep in mind in the following quote that the “middle-voice” means that the subject’s action has at least something of the reflexive component to it, i.e., that man’s not coming to the Son is something the man himself wills, though, of course, it is true that God upholds the form of the man while the man himself wills what he will do:

“The terms “deponent” and “deponency” are not useful in a discussion of ancient Greek voice, a fact that has been noted at least since A. T. Robertson’s big NT Greek Grammar…. In lieu of the term “deponent” I would suggest that we speak of “middle verbs.” I would use this term for verbs whose primary present-tense form is middle-voice; that would include all the verbs that are traditionally or conventionally termed “deponent” but it would also include a sizable number of essentially intransitive verbs that display common middle-voice present-tense forms but also have a transitive active-voice form in the present tense… “[http://artsci.wustl .edu/~cwconrad/])

We have already seen (see pp. 191-192) how dunamai is a verb capable of one OR more verbal aspects, and that depending on the context dunamai can exhibit a middle and/or a subjunctive aspect. I think we may grant (based on N.T. usage) that dunamai and its negating cognatedo at times respectively mean “to be able to” or “not to be able to” apart from what we normally consider is any middle (i.e., self-willed, self-intentional) quality that would account for that ability or inability. For example, Jesus spoke of not fearing those who were able to kill the body but not able to kill the soul. That is, presumably, these killers did not lack the intention to kill the soul; they simply lacked the sheer (bare) ability of soul-punishment which God has reserved for Himself alone. And yet even here it might be argued that God could transfer that power necessary to adjudicate souls to any person He wished, even to the Devil, if He so desired. But then of course God’s kingdom would not stand, being divided against its former principles. So, a middle aspect is sometimes [if not frequently or (theoretically) always] present in dunamai—at least in the subjunctive sense; but perhaps more to the point here is that the near and far contexts are those things which determine what verbal aspects of a predicate are in play. In the contexts of Acts 17:19 and John 6:44, for example, the subjunctive aspect (”may”) pertains to the contingency of potential hearers, though in these instances the hearing relates in turn to a 3rd party’s contingency—in the former case that of whether Paul would offer his message to the Athenians, in the latter case whether God would provide the atonement through the Son which pertains to man. Hence we understand Conrad’s illustration of the middle (primarily here, subjunctive) quality, in which, though on the one hand a boy is the object of others who baptize him, yet on the other hand he is the one who himself willingly undergoes baptism. So, the point here is that the Greek verb dunamai essentially acts as the word “can” in INFORMAL English, having capability of one OR more aspects, depending upon the context. And as regards John 6:44, arguably all three verbal aspects of dunamai are present: man does not 1) have the sheer ability to effect his atonement (”cannot come”); man does not will himself toward the Son apart from the Father’s drawing (”will not come”); and may not come toward the Son apart from Father’s provision of the Manna from heaven (”may not come”). Further, note the context of John 6:40: (lit) “And this is the will of the (One) sending Me, that everyone seeing the Son and believing in Him should have life everlasting…” Observe, then, that the person may see the Son contingent upon the Father’s plan being realized in Christ being lifted up (which did come to pass), and so would have eternal life if he will believe.

Now to better understand the will aspect of John 6:44, an analogy of the Father’s drawing may be helpful here. Suppose, for example, a son said, “Though my Dad is a local baseball team owner, no man will travel with me toward the ballpark unless my Dad woos and pulls him along with the promise of free hot dogs, while also twisting his arm by shaming him about his hitherto failure to support the local economy. Yet I will take him into the player’s clubhouse after the game for signatures.” Many attempts of persuasion take this form in life, e.g., when someone tries to persuade another toward some specific end. And this is done not merely by pointing out to the other person the personal advantages he can expect to enjoy, but also by appealing strongly to, or even pestering or shaming him about, his sense of duty. Even so does the word helko have a latitude of meaning depending on the context, even to the point of where, as Song of Solomon 1:4 demonstrates, it means to pull along by wooing. Arguably, John and even Jesus, as evangelists, take the full, varied approach of helko in the gospel of John. Thus the Father’s helko of man may sometimes be of softer admonishments but other times of strong, urgent appeals. When we see in the gospel of John that Jesus Himself embraces both of these approaches, there is no reason why both meanings for helko ought not to be understood for John 6:44. Furthermore, the Calvinist argument that helko is used for dragging a net, and that therefore the sense of irresistible force must be the interpretation for how the Father drags men to Christ [especially since helko is thought by some to be used by John in this way, though, in fact, John never uses it in this way regarding the will], nevertheless fails on at least two accounts: 1) It takes no account of the near context of John 5 and 6 in which the Jews were provided physical food they could have resisted, i.e., food which parallels Christ as the Manna from heaven who may also be resisted, and 2) It ignores the defining (and therefore lexical) way helko is used elsewhere in a willful context in the Septuagint, where to ignore the sense of helko’s meaning as pulling by wooing would mean that the Shulamite maid is essentially asking to be forced. Indeed, in what sense can helko mean to drag in Solomon 1:4? For it makes no sense for the Shulamite maid to say “Drag me, and we will run after you.” Furthermore, though Peter dragged (or pulled along) (helko) the net of fish ashore, the will of the fish never changed, any more than did the wills of Paul and Silas, though these apostles were dragged from Jason’s house; in other words, the will of one is never irresistibly dragged into the will of another. It was the bodies of Paul and Silas that were pulled or dragged, not their wills. It was the bodies of fish that were pulled ashore, not their wills. Thus for the Calvinist to transfer such an application of the dragging of an inanimate fish net to the dragging of persons’ wills, is to totally ignore the contextual difference between separate appearances of helko. In fact, by the same ‘logic,’ if one reversed which context was absolutized, one could make an equally absurd argument. For one could say that if God is said to drag a man’s will to the place that He wants apart from any physical involvement, then when Peter is said to have dragged the net to shore, the Bible must likewise mean that Peter did this apart from any physical involvement! But returning to our baseball analogy, we see how helko could operate in John 6:44. In our analogy the father is both wooing (gentlemanly coercing and pulling) and even pestering each person to travel toward the ballpark. He is pulling people toward his desired end. Yet many men who are invited will be quite indifferent about baseball, hot dogs, and the local economy. So some will go along, but others will not. In such a circumstance the son might say, “No man will [Gr. dunamai, see p. 186, footnote 50) come toward me to the ballpark unless my Dad woos him with the promise of free hot dogs and pulls him along by shaming him about not supporting the local economy. Yet I will take him into the player’s clubhouse after the game for signatures.” Now, plainly, nothing in this statement suggests that only those whom the son ultimately takes into the dugout after the ballgame for signatures will also be only those whom his Dad tried to persuade with hot dogs and with appeals to responsibility. To understand it in this forced way is to ignore the implied elliptical thought—i.e., the implication that those whom the son took into the dugout after the game are also those among whom his Dad wooed/compelled. This would be a normal assumption inferred from such a statement uttered as a manner of speaking. Why, then, as we consider John 6:44, must Jesus’ statement be understood otherwise, i.e., simply because God is the grammatical subject of the exceptive clause (and thus taken by the Calvinist to mean that God’s helko is irresistible), i.e., “except the Father draw him.” In other words, I am saying that Jesus is simply granting that His hearers will understand that the one (‘him’) whom he raises at the last day is also him whom His Father successfully persuaded. (For again, by analogy, not everyone in town cares about baseball, hot dogs, or the local economy.) As Jesus said in John 5:39-40: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; yet (kai) you are undesirous to come to me so that you might have life.” Again, even the context of John 5—6 (leading up to John 6:44), speaks of the many people surrounded by God’s grace who failed to give proper heed to their spiritual needs, i.e., those in the Old Testament who received the physical bread provided by the Father (in the wilderness), and those in the New Testament who received bread and fish provided by the Son (in a destitute area). Many such recipients displeased God, because they did not give sufficient attention to their spiritual needs. And such divine displeasure shows that God in fact had a right to expect a different response, i.e., because they could believe and come to the Son, though they would not.

Now, a word here should be said about persons being liable according to their knowledge of the law.

It is generally supposed that the Bible teaches there are sins of ignorance. Various verses in Leviticus 4 (KJV) speak of those who erred through ignorance, yet were guilty. (The NAS translates the idea of doing something ignorantly as “unintentionally.”) In this general regard note Leviticus 5:17-18 in the KJV:

¹⁷And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the LORD; though he wist it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity. ¹⁸ And he shall bring a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him.

However, there are at least two reasons why we may say that the Hebrew does not support the idea of sins of ignorance, that is, as we normally understand the term “ignorance.” First, while the English word “ignorance” technically means “without knowledge,” the Hebrew words used in Leviticus 4 and 5 (Strong’s related words #7686 and #7684) mean to wander (thus to err). The idea in Hebrew is that one wanders inadvertently. By the word”inadvertently” here, we do not mean sheer unknowingness but rather inattentiveness, unheededness, and thus, by implication, carelessness, negligence, etc. The idea in Hebrew is that, though one has not premeditated to commit some particular sin per se, one has, nevertheless, through general carelessness committed a sin because he allowed himself to become distracted at the time. Thus the error has nothing to do with not knowing the Law itself, but of inattentiveness to the Law, i.e., a Law which the man knows. An example of the difference between inattentive and unknowing can be seen in Josiah. Over time Judah (under Manasseh) grew so inattentive to the Law that Manasseh’s grandson, Josiah, was ignorant of various sins of Judah (in the sense of unknowing, not inattentive). [This is not to say that Manasseh was inattentive per se, as though the cares of the world slowly drew his attention to a point where he wandered from the Law. Rather, Manasseh’s abandonment of the law seems to have been more of zeal that of any inattentiveness, the proof being the extent of Manasseh’s sin despite having a godly father (Hezekiah) who ruled prior to his reign and who had led Israel into godly paths.] Another example might be a Jewish man who becomes so pre-occupied with his flocks and herds that he fails to rid his house of yeast before the Passover; thus he knew the law, but ‘forgot,’ i.e., was inattentive to it.

But moving on, a different Hebrew word occurs in Deuteronomy 19, which the KJV also translates as “ignorantly.” The difference is most significant.

⁴And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past; ⁵As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live: ⁶Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past. (vss. 4-6)

Here, the Hebrew term translated “ignorantly” is different than that found in Leviticus 4—5. The significance is found in the example given in Scripture itself, which defines what is meant by Strong’s #1097 (without or lack) with #1847 (much or especial knowledge). The idea is that one does not have significant knowledge; in other words, one has an ignorance about something. It does not mean that one has been inattentive. Indeed, based on Leviticus 4—5, if inattentiveness was meant by Strong’s #1097 with #1847, then the ax-wielder could not be said not to be worthy of death. Observe also that Strong’s #1847 is related to #3045, the basic word for knowledge. Tracing the lexical use of #1847 is revealing, and arguably shows that the ax-wielder did not have an especial, or additional, or ‘insider’s’ knowledge about the danger inherent in the ax. Thus the event was an accident and could not realistically have been anticipated because of relative ignorance. An analogy of this would be, say, if a baseball batter swung at a pitch, and the bat broke and flew and hit the pitcher, killing him. Such a terrible accident would not be due to inattentiveness, but to an unknowingness on the batter’s part of an inner weakness in the grain of the bat under stress, etc. Even so, the Hebrew word in Deuteronomy is essentially and adequately translated into English as “ignorantly” by the KJV here, since the ax slipped off the handle through relative ignorance, not inattentiveness. However, if, say, the ax-wielder used an ax which he already knew had the tendency to slip off upon every 4th or 5th swing, that would put the matter differently. For in such a case the ax-wielder would have had prior knowledge about the likely danger in using the ax. Thus if he used the ax and the ax-head flew off and killed someone, presumably he would be judged liable (or in some way liable) as under the same general principle of law which said that an owner was liable for a goring ox, when such an ox had gored someone in the past but the owner had not destroyed it. Finally, lest someone think that Leviticus 5:17 speaks of someone being guilty “and wist it not,” the next verse demonstrates that the “wisting it not” (not knowing it) is understood in the context of inattentiveness (Strong’s #7684), not basic ignorance.

Under these considerations, then, it does not appear that the Hebrew supports the idea that man is guilty even when he does not know the Law. Or to put the matter simply, it does not appear that there are sins of unknowing ignorance.¹⁴³i.e. ‘on the grounds of the fact that,’ (’that’ being the neuter relative pronoun for ‘on the grounds of the fact’)

¹⁴⁴Gr. Epi ho [technically here, EF’ hWi, KJV ‘for that‘ (in the phrase ‘for that all have sinned’)] appears to have the meaning of ’since,’ that is, in the sense of drawing the reader’s attention more upon the evidentiary (that is, obvious) nature of the statement being made, rather than upon any argumentative inflection that might have been implied had Paul used a more common form of ‘because.’ This fact explains the apparent definition for epi ho which M.R. Vincent gives in his Word Studies in the New Testament—’on the grounds of the fact that.’ In other words, epi ho points to the fact that the matter should be self-evident. Thus ’since’ is a desirable translation, for ’since’ is a form of ‘because’ but viewed as more obviously so (i.e., inasmuch). Paul, not having in mind any such thing as a doctrine of original sin, is simply making an evidential statement about how post-Adamic men came into condemnation. We ought not to expect, then, that Paul’s posture of speech should stem from the kind of confrontational apologetics that one might think ought to be present if Paul were really refuting the idea of original sin. Simply put, it was never Paul’s intent to do so, because it was not an issue at the time of his writing. Though Paul, in his epistles to churches, often did use an admonishing tone of (obviously, if admonitory) argumentative forms of ‘because,’ i.e., like the more common forms of ‘because,’ it is evident he did not do so here in verse 12. That it was never in the apostle’s mind to make a refutation per se against the doctrine of original sin shows how self evident he assumed the matter of sin’s spread (into the world) would be in his readers’ minds (and in fact an assumption quite supported by the contemporary Greco-Roman concept of personal guilt, which had little or nothing to do with ancestral transference). Indeed, though other early Church fathers commented on Romans 5, none of them held to the bizarre doctrine that Augustine would state in the 4^th century and which would come to have such dogmatic sway upon so many subsequent Church councils and so much thought. Personally, it seems to me that the phrase kai outws, which means, also in this manner, makes relatively plain that death traversed into the world in a manner like Adam’s—not in Adam, the latter being a different concept—and thus this makes the argument about epi ho essentially mute, especially given, as already noted, that the position of epi ho introduces a subordinate clause coming after the 2nd part of the correlative conjunction, and therefore can hardly be thought to refer to something prior to the 2nd part of the correlative conjunction.

¹⁴⁵The Greek word means traverse.

¹⁴⁶Though the phrase ‘in Adam’ is found in 1 Corinthians 15:22, where it refers to every man’s physical death as a consequence originating in Adam, the phrase “in Adam” in nowhere found in Romans 5:12-21.

¹⁴⁷Jay P. Green, Sr. (editor). Pocket Interlinear New Testament. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1986), p. 365.

¹⁴⁸Luke’s use, however, does have a limitation for our purposes, for epi ho is not used in his case to introduce a subordinate clause, as it (epi ho)functions in Romans 5:12, where there it comes after the 2nd part of a correlative conjunction. This is a grave problem for supporters of original sin. Thus in Luke the epi ho may likely point backward to more than a mere concrete noun, such as Christ’s command. (See p. 498, footnote 189 re: Carl Conrad).

¹⁴⁹Of course, based on this exposition, I am using this term differently than generally accepted.

¹⁵⁰At least one reason Christ was not subject to the Adamic curse is because Christ created Adam and thus preceded him (and was therefore not Adam’s descendent according to technical definition). Also, Christ Himself is exonerated as the command-Giver of Genesis 2:16-17, and, further, He was never a command-breaker. Finally, Christ was not incarnated with the knowledge of good and evil, which in history has come through the male Adamic line. Rather, Christ bypassed the knowledge of good and evil by His virgin birth, a mysterious process in which the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary.

¹⁵¹It appears that an infant, once he matures to a certain point, reaches a first level of accountability like animals (though he is not an animal as such, for he is made in the image of God) and is thus at first liable unto temporality (i.e., during his earthly life) but not liable unto eternity. At some subsequent point he matures to where he enters a second, or probationary, period in which his actions are liable unto eternal consequences. This we may call a person’s entrance into his period of accountability. It would appear that an animal’s choices are subject to this first kind of accountability (which, again, regarding its consequences, are temporal and presumably limited to this earthly life). The serpent-animal in the Fall narrative, which allowed the Devil the use of itself (it is unclear about the serpent-animal’s mate), was sympathetic to the Devil’s belief that God was selfish for wanting to keep the knowledge of good and evil away from man. Thus the serpent-animal had deliberated upon the objective knowledge that God was good, and the serpent-animal had denied it. Yet, presumably, the serpent-animal’s punishment is limited to its present life on this earth, since God says nothing to it about the kind of spiritual death which God had told Adam would be the consequence of his (Adam’s) disobedience. Again, presumably, this is because the serpent-animal did not act from the same kind of in-depth base of knowledge possessed by the Devil or even by the lower form, Adam, in the latter’s pre-fallen state. But the point here is that human infants, as they initially mature, may at first demonstrate a kind of disobedience which is classed with that of the animals, i.e., a disobedience that is not unto eternal liability. The apparent proof of this limited kind of liability is that such disobedience has not made the maturing infant aware of his nakedness, i.e., an awareness which would be the telltale sign of his having experienced spiritual death, even as it (an awareness of nakedness) served that telltale sign for Adam and Eve.

Arguably, the serpent-animal might not have chosen what it did, had not Satan been present. And arguably one-third of the angelic host might also not have rebelled against God, had it not been for Satan. There is culpability upon all—yes. But whether these other angels besides the Devil would have sinned, that is, apart from Satan’s influence, remains a question. Thus, while we do recognize that fallen angels are liable unto eternity for their rebellion (the Bible states that they will spend eternity in hell) we ought not to necessarily assume that animals will be subject in a future life to the kind of judgment they experience now, that is, if in fact they do have a future life (and, of course, I presume that they do for reasons already stated). At the least (and apart from the question about whether animals will be resurrected), we know that certain animals (e.g., the lion who lays down with the lamb) will not behave as he does now. Whether all animals (including the serpent-animal) will ‘lay down with the lamb’ is perhaps finally a question outside our ability to know, though I would hope that even this shall be the case.

¹⁵²It appears that reaching the age of accountability also begins a person’s probationary period unto eternal liability (the hypothetical length of which is ?). Furthermore, under Israel’s theocracy it appears that one became accountable for different things at different times (an example follows shortly), though any breach of any level of eternal accountability presumably made the person liable unto eternity before God. This raises the question whether every level of accountability for humans is of a liability unto eternity and therefore never like the temporal accountability of animals. Again, perhaps one could argue that in very young children, the severely retarded, etc., there may be an accountability that is similar to animals, that is, a level of liability short of eternal consequence. This might explain, for example, how toddlers, presumably unaware of their nakedness, might be disobedient to their parents without necessarily being guilty before God for all eternity, or, if their motive was 100% instinct for their just survival, then without any guilt whatsoever.

Moving on, let us consider some examples which, when taken together, suggest different levels of accountability. First, many children of Israel did not die in the wilderness during the Israeli rebellion at Kadesh-Barnea, because they were under the age of 20. Yet obviously at the time God judged the Israelis at Kadesh-Barnea, there had been Israeli teenagers of, say, 15 years old who knew their left hand from their right hand during the time of the plagues of Egypt—knew they were naked-and were thus discerning persons unto eternal liability. Yet they were not included in the judgment of Kadesh-barnea. So the further question is this: were these younger teenagers free of accountability in all areas of their life until coming to a single instant, whereupon they became accountable for all areas in their life? The answer appears negative as regards this present life. For observe that one of the reasons given under the Mosaic Law regarding the capital punishment by parents against a rebellious child, is that the child had demonstrated over time a refusal to accept discipline. Thus the child was subject to (liable unto) corporeal punishment in his early years, yet ultimately subject to (liable unto) capital punishment if he had demonstrated a lengthy rebellion (presumably for many years). This difference in punishment would indicate that there are different levels of accountability to which God judges the person, again, at least in regards to this earthly life. God is patient with all men in this earthly life, so that some vessels will respond to His mercy. However, it would appear that this does not negate any person’s eternal liability who is aware of his nakedness.

¹⁵³That is, man commits sin ex nihilio (by which I mean ‘out of nothing,’ or better stated (lest it be thought that I support the view that sin is privative and non-ontological) ‘by his own power apart from prior cause.‘

¹⁵⁴In contrast to the seed of the knowledge of good and evil, or, on the other hand, the matured knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁵⁵We mean by ‘influence’ the normal sense and definition of the word, i.e., as an influence that is resistible, i.e., suggestion which may or may not prove successful upon its object.

¹⁵⁶Paul’s use of the term (lit. Greek) “the many” in Romans 5:15 is suggestive. The verse reads:

“But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one the many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto the many.”

The Calvinist employs the hermeneutic of taking “the many” to mean those saved by limited atonement. Thus they claim that Paul is speaking of a subset of ‘all,’ i.e., ‘the many,’ (’the elect,’) and that Paul is no longer speaking of the experience of ‘all’ but merely of the experience of ‘the elect.’ This places all elected persons first as fallen irresistibly in Adam, then saved irresistibly in Christ. This imposition upon the text, along with the assumption that unsaved man is nowhere equated in definition to be ‘the many’ in Romans 5, is the kind of forced, eisegetical consistency that the Calvinist must impose from outside the biblical text in order to make terms consistently agree with his theology. Verse 18a for example, which begins with the important (Int.) “So then,” which announces the summarization of what has just been said, is an ellipsis of verse 12’s correlative conjunction, and, when taken with 18b, serves as a less abbreviated ellipsis than verse 15b and 15c [an ellipsis, we say, because of Gr. ws (like) which implies the ‘also‘ aspect of post-Adamic man’s similar performance in committing sin as had Adam]. Verse 18a and 18b also recapitulates verse 15b and 15c, thus showing the ‘all’ in 18b, to be a synonym (if of less implied description) than “the many” of 15c (i.e., all accountable persons). For one can hardly read 15b and 15c with 18a and 18b and not be struck with the natural conclusion that Paul is referring to the same persons. Needless to say, the inevitable result in Calvinist theology for the “all” is the complete annihilation of post-Adamic man’s will. Further, such an interpretation does nothing to solve the problem of evil, as the dilemma is merely pushed backward a step to Adam. But the main point here is this: Such a Calvinist position, while it fails 1) along with every main English translation to recognize the correlative conjunction in Romans 5:12 (with its implication of the individual’s ex nihilio culpability), and 2) to understand the limitations of reference for epi ho whenever that neuter relative pronounintroduces a subordinate clause, also shows what happens when a term must be defined by Calvinists according to Calvinistic principles—i.e., the term is defined irrationally (so that Adam can be claimed to have chosen our choices to be sinners).

Again, however, the correct view is wholly different than the Calvinist one. It recognizes ‘the many’ not as a subset of ‘all,’ but a term of more specific meaning, i.e., all accountable persons. (Indeed, Christ referred to those called out from among all as “the few,” not “the many.” Of what whole, then, does the Calvinist suppose the elect, i.e., “the many” are a majority?!) This is not to say that Paul was going out of his way to reprove a doctrine of original sin. Indeed, there is no reason Paul would have done so, since no such doctrine then existed among believers (as the early church Fathers prior to Augustine bear witness, some of whom wrote on Romans 5). Thus Paul simply chose language that was in keeping with his natural understanding of his subject, while the Spirit, in His inimitable way, and according to His foreknowledge, appears to have inspired Paul’s language so that it would express fuller meaning to us as argument than it ever did to the apostle. This recovery of the definition of ‘the many’ means that blameless persons under the age of accountability are not under condemnation. Nor is the blood of Christ an atonement for them, as for persons for whom atonement is unnecessary. In passing, observe that in this matter of the unnecessary atonement of the not many, the Levitical burnt offering for a mother, having birthed a son or daughter, was an offering of atonement for her, not for her baby, implying the moral indeterminacy of the newborn as a pre-accountable person.

¹⁵⁷Evangelical theologian Norman Geisler would disagree with this statement, but we will address his objections later in this chapter.

¹⁵⁸Note again that, though Christ is called the second Adam in Romans 5, this describes His office as an unfallen man. Again, Christ is eternally existent and therefore precedes Adam and also supersedes him. (Thus Christ Himself is not subject to the consequence of Adam’s fall, and thus He had to voluntarily give up His life in order to die.) Further, since Christ is called the Second Adam, we may assume that Pelagius (contemporary of Augustine) who was right to reject Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, was nevertheless incorrect to hold to the idea that every man who is born is born as Adam was at the first, i.e., with nothing inherited that would have affected his freedom. For otherwise Cain and Abel would presumably have been the 2^nd and 3^rd Adams, and so forth. Further evidence against Pelagisus’s conclusion is that Seth was made in the image of Adam, i.e., not made merely in the image of God, which suggests that Seth inherited something additional from Adam, though it was not something which annihilated his freedom. Thus Seth de facto, and in type (i.e., man since the Fall), was affected in his freedom, not disabled.

¹⁵⁹The exact accountable state of those who die on earth before entering the age of accountability (aborted babies, for example) raises the question of whether these persons ever come into choice unto eternal liability. I think they must (as made in the image of God), perhaps immediately, but if not, certainly eventually, and presumably apart from Satanic influence, as we know from Christ’s statement in Matthew that the welfare of little children is the charge of angels, and perhaps thus we may assume that they too are with God in heaven poised with choice like the angels themselves, though they are human.

¹⁶⁰As a de facto statement, Galatians 2:6 tells us that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Presumably, here the term ‘flesh’ means that state in which a person has already sinned (or not yet completed his probationary period) and has the matured form of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus no such person may atone for his own sin through works of the law. No man besides Christ has ever accomplished (or shall ever accomplish) the period of accountability unto justification.

¹⁶¹Again, in this context, we should not speak of Adam’s pre-Fall actions as sufficient over time to have satisfied God’s requirement for righteousness. Technically, we should not speak of Adam’s “sinlessness,” prior to the Fall, for he was merely on the path toward righteousness, i.e., a righteousness whose destination he never reached. God requires a consistency of belief unto His satisfaction, and Adam chose to miss that mark through disobedience.

¹⁶²A person’s moral choices unto eternal liability always take place in a context of understanding right and wrong; if that were not the case, that person could not be guilty unto eternal liability. This is why Paul says, “I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.” Apart from the Law (i.e., apart from a person acting in a context of his conscience or divine law, in which his understanding has matured enough to have made him subject unto eternal liability) there is no sin unto eternal liability. Put another way, one does not simply make bare choices. For the person in probation [i.e., testing unto a moral state], or post-probation, there is always the context of understanding, at least while understanding is present (God being the Judge of such matters as persons with Alzheimer’s, or in sleep, etc.). The failure to understand that freedom of the will is not simply the exercise of bare choices but takes place in the contexts of understanding and eternal liability has led some Calvinists to make confusing statements. For example, Calvinist and Baptist seminary professor, Bruce Ware, [http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeHjQHMWp1M] stated before an audience:

“Freedom is understood as this: ‘An action is free, if, when that action is performed, all things being just what they are, the agent could have done otherwise.’… Well, here’s the problem with this, and that is, when an action is performed, then there is no reason that is choice specific—action specific, for what that particular choice, why that particular action, was done. And so, if you ask the question: ‘Why did you pull the trigger so a murder is committed. Why did you pull the trigger?’ Well, any reason you give for why the trigger is pulled or any set of reasons for why the trigger is pulled, is the identical reason or set of reasons for why, if you hadn’t pulled the trigger, you didn’t pull the trigger. So how is that an explanation for how an action is performed? This will not hold up in a court of law. People look for motives. They look for the reason why actions are performed. So just to go on record here, don’t think the compatibilist view is the only one that faces philosophical difficulties. The libertarian view faces an enormous problem of being reducible to arbitrary choice.”

Observe, then, in the above statement by Ware, that libertarian will is treated as making bare choices. Ware is claiming that there is no moral necessity in the Arminian view [i.e., a view which he mistakenly thinks embraces libertarian will (an assumption which we will nevertheless allow for the moment for the sake of argument here)]. Thus, according to Ware, the will, if it were truly free, would have the identical reason for committing murder as it would for not committing murder.

The problem with Ware’s view, however, is that the apostle Paul makes clear that a person can only exercise the will unto eternal liability if he understands the Law. In Ware’s example, the subject of murder is obviously a sin unto eternal liability. But we should note that the reason one is eternally liable for murder is because the law/Law against murder is known by the perpetrator. To put the matter another way, the Bible teaches that complete ignorance of the law IS excuse in terms of eternal liability (see p. 705). This is why Paul goes to such lengths in Romans 1 and 2 to show that men were a law unto themselves and therefore not excusable. Thus a person who is under eternal liability for his actions knows what he ought to do before deciding whether or not he will commit e.g., murder. If he chooses, according to his conscience, not to commit murder because he agrees with the law/Law, then his conscience (proper reason, i.e., the understanding of right and wrong and the acknowledgement of the reality that a man is subject to God’s punishment if he commits wrong, including murder) agrees with the Law [proper reason as defined by God as the understanding of what was, is, and shall be, real, including God’s laws and their consequences, or, conversely, (where man’s repentance is in view), divine grace], and thus we see that the conscience and the Law are two reasons why the man should not commit murder. And of course such reasons as these for not committing murder are not, as Ware claims, the same reason or reasons why one should choose to commit murder, since in this latter case (i.e., to commit murder) one disagrees with what he knows he ought to do. And so the reasons for pulling the trigger or not pulling the trigger are in fact exactly opposite to, not identical with, each other. In short, Ware is wrong for one reason—because he fails to note that by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Further, Ware’s identification of the will with performing that will creates further confusion when motive is in view. (If Ware did make this distinction in his speech, it did not make the youtube video.) For example, suppose a person fighting in and for a just war is captured by the enemy who plans to kill him after first torturing him. Are the captors really not guilty of murder until they commit the performance of it? This brings us to an essential distinction which Ware fails to note, i.e., that the will, properly defined, is intention, and/or the intention, to perform an act, not merely the performance of the act. Thus those captors who intend to kill the just man are already guilty of murder. (This explains why Christ stated that some men are guilty of adultery even though they had not technically participated in the physical act.) But the general point here is this: a person who intends not to commit murder, acts accordingly because he understands and agrees with God that murder is wrong. It’s that simple. Are you surprised that such an obvious answer—that ignorance of the law IS excuse, and that knowledge of the law is NO excuse—could escape the mind of the professing Evangelical theologian and academician? Don’t be. Calvinists refuse to recognize that the finger they point at the ‘enormous problem’ of ‘arbitrary choice’ which they claim is an Arminian problem for having proposed that man exists in libertarian freedom, merely points three fingers back to the ‘enormous difficulty’ of proposing arbitrary choice to an absolutely free and sovereign God who elects some and damns others for the identical reason, i.e., that of His pleasure in bare choice. Here we recall A.W. Pink’s view that God damns some according to His “sovereign” choice which operates apart from any consideration of “justice” or “injustice.” (See latter part of Footnote 142, explaining further why ignorance of the Law IS excuse, and the real meaning of “ignorance” in Lev. 5:17-18.) In other words, Ware’s description of man’s libertarian Choice, existing in the vacuum of distinction, was a foregone conclusion for him as an alleged believer in a Sovereign Decreer of good and bad, i.e., since a Sovereign God must choose all the choices of men and their actions, some of which actions are indeed evil. Ware’s accusation of man thus ought to be the same accusation he brings against God, but of course he ‘escapes’ this charge by appealing (we presume his response), as indeed he must as a Calvinist, to the classic Calvinist pro Deo/ ad hominem argument. Thus for Ware man is wrong in his ‘bare’ choice because he is man, but God is justified in his ‘bare’ choice because he is God. We are tempted to turn Ware’s questions back upon himself. How does his ad hominem/ pro Deo presumption hold up in court? How does such an ‘explanation’ exonerate God’s motive? Using such sophistry (we have a duty to call Ware’s philosophy what it is), professors like Ware have helped to influence Southern Baptist seminary students until now 30% of the graduates from the combined (six) Southern Baptist seminaries identify themselves as Reformed in their theology, even though only 10% of active pastors in Southern Baptist churches identify themselves likewise. If the next generation sees the proportional difference triple again, it seems clear that Calvinism will become a very major issue in upcoming Southern Baptist conventions before long. Currently, there are two Calvinist presidents among the six Southern Baptist seminary presidents.

¹⁶³ Again (and not to weary the reader upon this point), this compelling nature of the knowledge of good and evil appears to be passed through the male seed, and this is why Christ needed to be born of a virgin. To truly have been the second Adam, Christ needed to have begun His life apart from the knowledge of good and evil, even as Adam had begun his life. Furthermore, to have the same experience of choice that Adam had, Christ had to empty Himself of His divine knowledge of good and evil which He naturally had as a Person within the Triune God. I believe this is part of the meaning in Philippians 2:7, when it tells us that Christ emptied Himself (of some of the privileges of His Divinity, though of course not of Divinity itself). Further, if Christ was truly the second Adam, then He too would have been unaware of His nakedness, even as Adam and Eve had been unaware of their own nakedness prior to the Fall. It is interesting to note that Christ never made a statement indicating that He was aware of His nakedness. Of course, He clothed himself for the sake of others, but note that the nature of the Messianic statement in Psalm 22, in which the Messiah Himself describes His unclothed self on the cross, is not really a statement about nakedness (”I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me”) but about His unclothed state as He saw and understood it as an unfallen man.

¹⁶⁴One question that is often raised in favor of the doctrine of original sin is this: Wouldn’t someone in all of human history besides Christ be likely to live a sinless life if all humans are not born with a sin nature but merely with the seed of the knowledge of good and evil? Yet to this I would answer that it seems more incredulous to me to grant the doctrine of original sin; for under such a doctrine God declares post-Adamic man guilty in moral matters in which man has no more ability to choose than in the choosing of the color of his skin. But to answer the question directly, the problem here is that the knowledge of good and evil (in the matured person) is assigned too little intensity, and not at all appreciably understood for its vast influence upon the will. Doubtless, this state makes it impossible for us to fully know what it was really like for Adam to have chosen evil during a probationary period in which, during the course of his deliberation, he did not have the (especial) knowledge of good and evil. Basically, post-Adamic man simply has nothing with which to compare Adam’s experience. But further, in practice it appears that not even one Christian among the many who live in this world to any extent has lived a spotless, unblemished, sinless life, though hypothetically the Bible tells us that every Christian has de facto had the power to do so. But should we conclude, because none so live, that so much contrary behavior is proof against the hypothetical? No, not at all. Then neither should we argue that because no flesh shall be justified, that it thus follows that no flesh could have been. In short, regarding all these matters, we must simply accept the Bible’s statements.

¹⁶⁵The question might be asked why it is important not to believe in original sin. The short answer is, because it is not true! A further point is that it leads to incorrect assumptions about the permeable boundaries between one person’s being and another’s. The matter is important, for at the heart of Christian theology there must be a true understanding of the nature of God and the nature of man. Moreover, if (as Calvinists contend) we each have sinned in Adam such that Adam chose our choice without having chosen our choice, it seems then but a small step to also say that God can choose man’s choice without God choosing man’s choice.

¹⁶⁶Technically, the “just as” does not begin the verse. Rather, the first word in Romans 5:12 is “Wherefore” (Gr. transliteration, “Because of this”) with the “just as” following immediately afterward.

¹⁶⁷Even in the phrase, “Bill’s jacket is exactly like Susan’s jacket,” there is still the difference of personal ownership. Otherwise the phrase ‘exactly like’ could not be used.

¹⁶⁸The details of the first part of the correlative conjunction show this to be a natural conclusion, for observe that the first part includes sin’s entrance into the world, and thus, naturally, something more should be stated about worldly effect in the second part of the correlative conjunction. Thus the phrase ‘and death by sin’ is used by Paul semi-parenthetically in verse 12 as a transition shifting the grammatical subject from sin to sin’s effect (death), i.e., from the first part of the correlative conjunction to the second part of the correlative conjunction.

¹⁶⁹Indeed, in the margin translation Green in fact renders hosper as “Even as”.

¹⁷⁰In English, ‘as’ also often substitutes for ‘to be.’

¹⁷¹It would appear impossible that Paul’s use of the neuter relative pronoun ’since’ [on the (evidential) grounds of the fact that] could refer to any concrete noun in the first part of a correlative conjunction, since epi ho introduces a subordinate clause that comes after the second part of the correlative conjunction. The natural meaning would therefore be to take either 1) the immediate preceding noun “death,” which we cannot use since the Bible does not teach that death effects sin, or 2) to take the rest of the subordinate clause which follows epi ho, which in fact provides the natural meaning, i.e., ‘on the (evidential, i.e., obvious) grounds of the fact that all have sinned.’ Moreover, if Paul was using epi ho to refer to something in the first part of the correlative conjunction in order to say that we sinned in Adam, then why would Paul have stated in verse 12 that man sinned in a manner like Adam, and then clarify in verses 13ff what minority sense (of meaning) man sinned in a manner unlike Adam? Such definitions ought to exclude any interpretation that we sinned in Adam.

¹⁷²By the use of ‘as’ in this sentence, I do not mean anything of an atoning nature but merely of the cessation of one’s physical life.

¹⁷³In endnote lxiv, showing the discussion between Ross and Conrad, we also include a brief exchange between Conrad and Steve LoVullo which occurred nearly two years later, in which the latter appears to agree with Conrad’s conclusions regarding Ef hWi.

¹⁷⁴(only a fraction of which I quote in this book)

¹⁷⁵It should be remembered that God’s provision of the free gift of salvation does not equal its automatic reception by man.

¹⁷⁶Green, Jay P. (editor). Pocket Interlinear New Testament. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1986). p. 365

¹⁷⁷Verse 16 seems to slow down the momentum of Paul’s argument just enough to allow Paul to remind his Roman readers of what should be obvious to them by this point in his book—that the free gift (of Jesus Christ) was not as Adam’s contribution (which led to condemnation), but one leading to justification. Perhaps even wry irony is suggested here, i.e., that the gift of Christ to the race was not like the ‘gift’ [‘one‘ (i.e., of contribution)] which Adam gave, i.e. a ‘gift’ that consisted of his going into the condemnation which would produce a flesh of weakness in all men. Some gift! Furthermore, the same preposition (eis) is used of the offense of Adam leading to [or into, (Gr. eis)] condemnation as that used of Christ’s work leading to [or into, (Gr. eis)] justification. The point is an abstract one not to be over-literalized but to be understood in a context of human freedom and response. Geisler’s claim, based on the traditional ‘original sin’ interpretation of verse 12—i.e., that “no such qualifying terms like receive (v. 17) are used of the consequences of Adam’s sin, even though these terms are used in reference to the appropriation of the gift of salvation that Christ provided for all”—fails to consider that Paul is continuing his comparison through all of verse 15, as will be shown by our argument in the main text. Admittedly, sometimes commentators have forced upon the betimes hop-scotch, digressive, and intuitive way of Paul’s thinking a template of strict, sequential argument that does not always exist (at least in some cases) and which threatens proper exegesis when such is inferred by readers. While the goal of systematizing theology may be a good one, it should be noted that the Bible, as a whole, hardly expounds its truths in so convenient a fashion, and this observation is perhaps more evident in Paul’s writings than in the writings of any other biblical author outside the poetic works. Furthermore, it does not seem to me that systematic theology has taken into sufficient account the multi-layered meanings of certain biblical passages.

¹⁷⁸kai outws (Note to the reader: the Greek “w” is pronounced as “o” in English) is fairly straightforward in its interpretation, and means also in this manner. Or one may reverse the order of words for conventional English, i.e., in this manner also. (Even the phrase “in this manner” has an ‘also’ aspect to it, since it refers to some characteristic it shares with the thing with which it is being compared. Thus when hosper is used in conjunction with either kai outws or outws kai there is always a correlative conjunction present and a comparison being made, such that the things being compared to each other are alike in some general sense, yet unlike in some particular sense.

There are several ways hosper is used in its 39 appearances in Scripture. Sometimes it is used without the kai outws or outws kai, though the general thought of also in either of these phrases is always evident. For example, when a statement or imperative command is present, such as “Therefore be ye perfect, just as (Gr. hosper) your Father in heaven is perfect,” the implication is that the believer is to be just like his Father also,i.e., in being perfect; other times hosper is used merely with outws, stressing the similarity of manner aspect, and at other times with either the phrase kai outws or outws kai. Perhaps it is a failure of my own personal study that I have not discovered any commentary on what some nuance of difference might be implied between the word order of kai outws and outws kai. At any rate, my own conclusion is that the first word in the phrase kai outws or in the phrase outws kai is the one intended by the author to be emphasized. It is rather difficult to make this argument from any one verse alone, though I believe it is more obviously the case in at least one verse, that of John 5:21, in which the issue of Jesus’ equality (v. 19) would suggest that some nuance of emphasis in the phrase kai outws is on the kai (also), rather than on the outws (in this manner), i.e., on the fact that the Son shall give life unto the dead ALSO in the manner of the Father, rather than the fact that the Son shall give life unto the dead IN THE MANNER also of the Father. This relative emphasis on also instead of in this manner is reversed, for example, when Christ tells His disciples that they are not to pray IN THE MANNER also (outws kai) of the heathen, who vainly think that by repetition they shall be heard. Further, while Gr. outws (in this manner) is sometimes translated ‘thus,’ or ’so,’ I disagree with the idea that outws [KJV ‘so,’ or ‘thus’ (as in therefore)] is properly inferred from the text to mean something causative in the way these two words ’so’ and ‘thus’ are often taken to mean in English. Rather, outws merely means ‘in this manner’ and occurs in comparative contexts to show in what manner something is like. Therefore outws [in this manner] always acts as a referent pointing the reader’s attention to a comparison in the immediate or very near context. In this sense outws (meaning in this manner) also carries with it an aspect of besides (i.e., also), and this fact explains why the two words kai and outws in certain comparative contexts might naturally occur together. Therefore the kai outws (also in this manner) should never be taken to mean an inexorable therefore, i.e., in a causative sense. Of further note is that outws, when it appears alone (without kai), is nevertheless always used in comparative contexts because of the ‘also’ aspect implicit in the word. It appears that Calvinist apologetics has not yet reached the point where our argument here about ws and hosper is sufficiently known to compel a response. If it does become known, I would expect Calvinists to rewrite the lexical history of ws, hosper, kai outws, outws kai, and any other word or terms that threaten their dialectical paradigm, and thus claim a wider latitude of definition, so that these terms include the implicit meaning of a divine “therefore.” This is simply a method by Calvinists to ensure that the pantheistic quality of Calvinism is preserved. In this view man is held to be a manifestation of the Divine, nothing more (one recalls Warfield’s statement that God creates the very thoughts and intents of the heart). This is Spinoza’s man, which was held to be the finite (change) that emerges from out of the Infinite (one impersonal, unchanging Substance) and going back into it. Further, I would expect Calvinists to continue the yin and the yang of the forward and backward rocks of their dialectical rocking-horse theology, justifying the One of pantheism on the one hand, while insisting on Individuation and Creator versus creation distinctions on the other hand.

But to return to our subject, examples of the somewhat infrequent phrase kai outws are sprinkled throughout the New Testament (Lk. 24:46, Acts 17:33, Acts 27:44, Acts 28:14, Rom. 11:26, 1 Cor. 7:17, 1 Cor. 7:36, 1 Cor. 11:28, 1 Cor. 11:25, 1 Cor. 15:11, Gal. 6:2, 1 Thes. 4:17, Heb. 6:9, and Heb. 8:15). The also aspect of kai outws is fairly apparent in most of these examples. Romans 11:26 is typical, in which the phrase “And so all Israel shall be saved” is in the context of the Gentiles being grafted in. This grafting will ultimately make Israel jealous, and so the Jews also [i.e. in addition to the Gentiles] in this manner [of desire] shall be saved. Another example typical of most examples is Galatians 6:2: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Here the word so does not mean therefore but rather also [you] in this manner fulfill the law of Christ. Conventional English actually compels a reversal of word order here, “Bear ye one another’s burdens; in this manner also fulfill the law of Christ.” The reference is to either Christ Himself (as implied in the one authorizing His law) to whom we should also in this manner emulate, or, to two verses earlier, in which Paul states that the Galatians should not merely live in the Spirit de facto, but also walk in the Spirit, i.e., restoring a brother from sin and thus bearing his burden in the Christian act of one-anothering, thereby fulfilling the law of Christ. First Corinthians 15:11 is also typical: “Therefore whether [it were] I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.” Here the phrase, “also in this manner ye believed” means that the Corinthians came to also believe in the same manner in which Paul and others believed who preached to them. Thus, Paul was saying that their belief was authentic. Consider also 1 Corinthians 7:17: “But as God hath distributed [a particular marital status] to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches.” Here, in the phrase “And so ordain I” the words And so (kai outws) refer to Paul also in the same manner ordaining the same for all the churches, i.e., the Galatians were not being singled out as though they alone were under this instruction. Also, in this regard, consider Acts 27:43-44 “But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from [their] purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast [themselves] first [into the sea], and get to land: And the rest, some on boards, and some on [broken pieces] of the ship. And so [kai outws] it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.” Here the kai outws means that those who could not swim were also saved in the same manner of casting themselves into the sea, though these made it to land on boards or broken pieces of the ship. Another and very interesting example is Luke 24:46. Here we read, “And [Jesus] said unto them, “Thus it is written, and thus (kai outws) it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” ” Taking our definition of kai outws to mean also in this manner would suggest a weightier texture in this passage emphasizing the deity of Christ, i.e., also, in this manner Christ was involved with the agreement with the other two Persons of the Trinity about the Messianic scripture being written by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the will of the Father.

Finding what the kai outws refers to in two other passages is somewhat more challenging. In Hebrews 6:15, for example, Abraham’s patience appears to be the also to the given circumstance of his faith, implied in verse 12 (a la Galatians 5:28—’walking the walk of faith in patience, not just talking the talk’). And in Acts 28:14 the kai outws may refer to the renewed journey also proceeding in the same manner of embarking with a South wind, mentioned just one verse prior which hearkens back a full chapter to Acts 27:13 to the time the former journey embarked just prior to shipwreck.

Incidentally, Thayer notes what he believes is an exception to the proper completion of wsper (”even as”) in Matthew 25:14, lit. “For even as a man going abroad…” But it should be noted that the correlative conjunctive phrase is complete if one goes to Matthew 25:1 and understands that the normal order of “even as” preceding the comparison is reversed in Matthew 25. Thus, taking the relevant clauses together from verses 1 and 14, we have “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins…, [even]as a man traveling into a far country…” That is, the ‘as’ is understood in the words “likened unto” such that “The kingdom of heaven shall be likened unto [i.e., as]…” Thus the parable of the ten virgins, which follows this introductory thought about the kingdom of heaven in verse 1, begins the correlative conjunction to which the even as (wsper) in verse 14 responds. The point here is that nowhere in the New Testament does the word wsper occur without its resolution, including Matthew 25 or, for that matter, Romans 5:12. Nor in Romans 5:12 should a delay be thought to exist as a kind of reversal of how it appears in Matthew 25, such that the resolution of wsper at the beginning of Romans 5:12 should seek the more usual resolution of outws kai which is far away forward in verse 15a(2), especially since outws kai in verse 15a(2) [“so also the offense”] points back to the immediate context of ws found in the preceding phrase in 15a(1) [“But not as”].

Also (and incidentally), the fact that ‘men’ in Romans 5:12b is the object of the preposition (upon) which points back to the subject ‘death’ in verse 12’s compound subject (sin/death as a non-synonymous compound subject which retains its cause and effect relationship, as might be exampled, say, in the sentence, “The theft and its effect“)—a compound subject personified by Paul in verse 12 in which he describes it as outside force coming into the world and spreading its effect throughout the world—does not affect our argument about kai outws, as long as we understand that Paul’s personification of sin is a term of abstract convenience for the apostle’s philosophical thought, and that it remains understood that men, not sin itself, nor death, causes sin.

Taking the above (especially former) factors regarding kai outws and outws kai into consideration, observe that the Greek word wsper (hosper) in Romans 5:12 would therefore suggest that the kai in kai outws be given somewhat more force than outws. However, it should be noted in passing that nothing crucial to the argument against original sin depends on taking kai with more emphasis than outws, since obviously both ideas (i.e., also, and in the manner of ) are comparative by definition. I merely advance the idea because I think it adds a nuance of clarity to Romans 5:12. Specifically speaking, the appearance of kai outws in verse 12 means that the effect of death also (that is, along with sin) traversed into all men in the same manner as it had with Adam, i.e., by man sinning against the conscience.

The failure by advocates of original sin to recognize that kai outws is present for the purpose of completing the correlative conjunction begun by hosper, has given a huge boost to the false doctrine of ‘original sin.’ However, not all translators have missed the correlative conjunction. Jay Green, in the Interlinear he edited (pub. Baker), translates kai outws in Romans 5:12 as so also. I believe this is essentially correct. In contrast, the KJV and NAS translate kai outws “and so,” while the NIV translates it “and in this manner,” which is somewhat better but still not really recognizing the “also” aspect intended for completing the “even as,” as it otherwise should have been translated. Note in passing that, while the last ‘as’ in the prior sentence of this footnote, i.e., “as it otherwise should have been translated” does not mean something causative or even of similarity, since the English usage also permits ‘as’ to be used as an intensifier of fact. This “as” thus renders the aforementioned last phrase as follows: “as in fact it otherwise should have been translated.” But what I’m contending here is that the Greek words ws and hosper do not have that lexical function. They always mean “like” and “just like,” respectively.

Moving on, then, below are some considerations why the KJV and NAS in particular should not have merely used “and so” for Romans 5:12. First, those who believe Romans 5:12 teaches the doctrine of original sin appear to have taken the English translation of ‘as’ in “Wherefore as by one man sin entered the world” and treated it as though it meant since or because, as in fact the word as may at times mean in English depending on the context and/or intent of the author. For example, in the statement “I now hope to attend college, as I have finished high school,” the word as means since or because. But such an as is not the meaning of wsper nor even of ws, i.e., hosper’s etymological root, according to its lexical use. That is, neither wsper or ws have a causative meaning. Unfortunately, the English definition of as in its causative sense appears to have led many English readers toward accepting the doctrine of original sin, along with the simple ‘and so ‘ later in verse 12, which is taken to mean in English ‘and therefore.‘ This assumption upon the English word as makes it seem as though the text is saying that all have sinned because of Adam. Perhaps a mistake by English readers (that we ought to mention again) is when ‘as’ is taken by them to be a mere intensifier of fact, i.e., “Wherefore, as in fact by one man’s disobedience…”, thus destroying entirely the sense that any correlative conjunction is indeed afoot.

Another proof of the presence of the correlative conjunction in Romans 5:12 is the argument of verse 13ff, in which Paul stresses that men have not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s sin. But again, Paul does not mean a dissimilarity in toto, but merely a relative dissimilarity. It explains the evident reason why Paul did not use the common phrase outws kai (even so) which would have stressed the general sameness of manner. Instead, he used kai outws to stress the relative general sameness of manner (the kai taking some priority of emphasis). Indeed, it would be incongruent for Paul to draw, as he did, such a relative distinction between the act of Adam and the acts of his descendents who did not follow after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, if the apostle actually held the idea, as advocates of original sin seem to claim, that men had imputed to them the very guilt of Adam’s transgression.

¹⁷⁹Technically, the word is ws (as), not the more intensive hosper (from ws and per, the latter intensifying ws), but the phrase “But not as the offence” is an ellipsis that, we note here, may include ws in the spirit of replacing hosper. If, however, Paul was intentional about using ws as opposed to hosper, it may be because the particular subjects of this correlative conjunction, i.e., the offence and the gift, are so intrinsically different in nature as to make ws appear somewhat more appropriate. However, in my desire to clearly articulate the argument that a correlative conjunction is introduced in 15a, I have chosen to render ws to be “just as,” since this is the normal way in English of introducing a correlative conjunction, though technically “as” could suffice.

¹⁸⁰In fact, to avoid this problem the Calvinist takes the term “all” to mean something different than “the many,” whereas Paul simply meant “all the many,” i.e., ‘all accountable,’ that is, the majority of humans who, in fact, had reached the age of accountability and also chosen to sin.

¹⁸¹See pp. 53-54, where a rocking horse is used as a metaphor for expressing the dialectical tension between the ‘this, yet that,’ i.e., the forward rock of the absolute sovereignty of God, yet the backward rock of the free will of man. Such a dialectic finds its ‘rest’ only at its synthesized center of tension.

¹⁸²Notice the phrase in 15b: “for if through the offence of the one the many did die…” This comes immediately after Paul has made the first three words of 15a (”But not as…”) serve as a referent to post-Adamic sin which is contrasted in verses 13-14 with Adam’s sin, a point about the former which gives Paul’s readers more detail about the different means to how sin subsequently spread throughout the world. In other words, Paul is stating that the post-Adamic offense was not in every particular like Adam’s sin insofar as involving the eating of forbidden fruit; rather, it was generally like Adam’s sin for being transgression against the conscience (because it was committed apart from specific, divine Law). Thus what Paul states in 15b cannot be a reversal of what he just said by way of ellipsis in 15a regarding how post-Adamic man came into condemnation, or else Paul would be contradicting himself. Therefore 15b (’For if through the offense of one many be dead’) ought not to be taken in its most literal sense, that is, in which its interpretation would be improperly stripped of its surrounding context. Rather, Paul has in mind merely the general, spiritual effect of Adam’s sin upon humanity, when he says that through the offense of the one the many did die. Most importantly, while this thought is repeated with slight variation in verses 17, 18, and 19, note especially that, when Paul comes to his main summarization in verse 18a (Int. “So, then,…”) to restate what in fact he has already said in verses 13-14, he re-states his position with less of an ellipsis (i.e., with more content) than that which he used in 15b:

(Gr. lit.) “So, then, like through one offense into all men into condemnation, so also through one righteous act into all men into justification of life.”

Again, Paul is here making an ellipsis of verses 13-14 to make sure that what he had said in vss. 13-14 was understood, i.e., that all men came into condemnation like Adam—that is, not in the particular sense of breaking the Garden Command (for post-Adamic man already showed that, in this regard, he was unlike Adam)—but in the general sense of transgressing against the conscience. One must always keep in mind that when Paul states in verse 18a that post-Adamic man’s sin was like Adam’s, that the nature of saying ‘A is like B,’ is to say that A is generally like B, but in some particular(s) is unlike B. That, in fact, is what the word ‘like’ means. So, whenever Paul is discussing Adam and post-Adamic man, he has in mind that they are generally like each other (in that they have both committed sin against the conscience), but particularly [i.e. in some particular(s)] unlike each other [in the sense of the particular kind of law (or Law) against which they sinned]. This is why 15b (where the word ‘like’ is absent) must be taken figuratively so that Adam is representative of humanity in general, that is, if 15b is not taken as an ellipsis. But of course 15b ought to be taken as an ellipsis because 18a, in summarizing what Paul was stating by abbreviation in 15b (as stemming from vss. 12-14), and by his adding the word ‘like,’ shows that 15b was not meant to be taken literally, or, if it was meant to be taken prima facie, that it be taken figuratively to mean Adam representing Everyman, and how Everyman has sinned against his own conscience. Otherwise (as already noted) 15a and 15b will be in contradiction with each other. Moving on, Paul then essentially restates verse 18a in verse 19a, saying that, (Gr. lit.) ‘For even like through the disobedience of the one man…’ and here the ‘even’ in the ‘even like’ places even more emphasis on the sameness of the Adamic and post-Adamic responses of sinning against one’s conscience (the general sense in which like is defined to be the same). Paul adds this slight difference (hosper instead of ws) in verse 19a to make sure the general point in his summary is not missed about the sameness of the nature of every man’s sin as a transgression against the conscience, the primary point of verse 12. Although we have gotten a bit ahead of the main text here, this point about the dual aspect of like must be kept in mind as we move forward through the following points.

¹⁸³This view thus also provides for a period of accountability. If the term ‘age of accountability’ is used, the beginning point is defined as that instant at which one enters the period of accountability.

¹⁸⁴i.e., Paul’s argument is a general one, in which the Gentile conscience is implied to have been intact (not seared) in regard to the Neighborly Command (which can only be properly understood in the context of being under the First and Greatest Command).

¹⁸⁵The terms ‘weakness’ and ‘inability’ should not be confused, for to be without strength means to be without strong, not any, ability. Note the NAS’s unfortunate word choice of “helpless.” When Christ told Peter (Mk. 14:38) that the Spirit was eager, but the flesh was weak, He was not stating that the flesh was disabled, otherwise He would not have just asked Peter rhetorically, “Were you not strong enough to watch one hour?” (Mk. 14:37).

¹⁸⁶i.e., ‘even as sin entered the world by one man, resulting in spiritual death,’

¹⁸⁷In fact, verse 6 characterizes the entire argument Paul has been making since the middle of chapter one—that men have sinned against their conscience.

¹⁸⁸pointed out by Gordon Olson in his book, Getting the Gospel Right.

¹⁸⁹As Carl Conrad states (see his quote in more detail on p. 676, endnote lxiv):

“BUT I do NOT believe that EF’ hWi when used to introduce a subordinate clause is EVER used to refer back to a larger textual unit (clause, paragraph, section); while you may see an instance where the hWi is masculine sg. relative pronoun referring back to a masculine antecedent noun (Acts 7:53 hWi with TOPOS) or where a hHi refers back to a feminine antecedent noun (Luke 11:22 THN PANOPLIAN AIREI EF’ hHI EPEPOIQEI …), I do not believe a clear instance will be found wherein the neuter relative pronoun object of EPI refers back to a textual unit larger than a concrete noun.”

In passing, one should note the position taken by the Eastern Fathers, i.e., interpreting the spelling of EF’ hWi to be masculine, thus pointing back to thanatos (death), and, from this, making the further inference that death passed upon all men as caused by Adam. But the problem with the view of the Eastern Fathers, besides the fact that death is defined in the Bible as an effect, not a cause, of sin (an argument which by itself is fatal to the Eastern Fathers’ view), is that it fails to ask why Paul, if he were really putting forth a doctrine about original sin, simply wouldn’t have eliminated the correlative conjunction to begin with, i.e., the whole cumbersome format about sin’s entrance and subsequent traversing through all men, and eliminate also his subsequent ellipses which likewise would have presumably been unnecessary. In other words, why not just state the matter baldly from the start of verse 12 (i.e., “And all men are sinners in Adam because Adam sinned”)? But that is not how the text reads, and this is why Paul states the opening phrase of verse 12 the way he does, for in stating “Because of this,” he refers to a causal factor prior to verse 12 in which Adam has not at all figured or even been mentioned.

Furthermore, in analyzing the implications which follow from the doctrine of original sin, the charge (as already noted) may be raised that Adam and post-Adamic man are never really defined as separate moral beings anymore than God and Adam are defined as separate moral beings in Calvinist theology. Post-Adamic men are somehow thought to be present with Adam (i.e., in the imagined phrase, ‘all have sinned in Adam’) though obviously they did not yet exist as persons (or did they in some sense?—the advocates of original sin can’t seem to clearly tell us); furthermore, death is somehow thought to cause sin in post-Adamic man, though on the other hand sin is said to have caused death in the first man Adam, etc. Fuzzy and circular definitions about man thus abound to a point where no moral causation is properly explained. The reason is simple—because any self-determining being other than God is never really allowed in Calvinist theology. Consequently, Adam’s causative effect upon his descendents is explained with no more clarity than any other human causation. This ‘back burner’ insistence on God’s unilateral causation is why, e.g., Calvinist John Piper concludes at the end of his article Are there Two Wills of God?, “I do not find in the Bible that human beings have the ultimate power of self-determination.” And yet observe in passing, that Piper’s use of the word ‘ultimate’ (in the above statement) is arguably his concession to the backward rock (of the dialectical rocking horse) in favor of man’s freedom, as though there were some degree or kind of causation less or other than ‘ultimate.’ In fact, this explains why Piper, when about to offer an example from Deuteronomy allegedly proving that God has two wills (which Piper defines dialectically), feels enough ideological ‘wiggle-room’ to state that these two wills of God will be shown to be “strikingly different (not contradictory, I will argue).” In other words, had Piper stated the matter thus, i.e., “All human beings have never been, are not, and shall not be, determinative in any way whatsoever,” then Piper could hardly have then used the qualifier “(not contradictory, I will argue)” (emphasis mine). Note, then, that such a paradigm by Piper obviously makes any intelligible discussion about sin, original sin, or any other topic involving causation, quite impossible.

¹⁹⁰or, “being the state of things that”

¹⁹¹A grammatical reminder: ‘beside’ means alongside; ‘besides’ means in addition to.

¹⁹²The early church father, Chrystotym, takes the same position as we do here, treating the Greek word hina i.e., ‘that,’ as ecbatic (i.e., so that, or with the result that) rather than telic (in order that ). Thus, Law came alongside man’s conscience, with the result that sin might abound.

¹⁹³Again, it is important to understand that the seed of the knowledge of good and evil, which we inherit from Adam, is a seed of knowledge born of the consequence of Adam’s sin, and is not sin itself. From Adam a person inherits this seed of knowledge that matures into a fuller knowledge presented to his mind about which he makes eternally liable decisions. Had there been no Fall, a person would still be born with a simpler kind of knowledge which nevertheless would eventually mature enough to enable the person to make decisions unto eternal liability, though apart from the distraction of a fallen flesh.

¹⁹⁴In light of our observation that the Romans 5:15 term, ‘the many’ means accountable persons, not all persons, it is interesting to see Isaiah use the term ‘many’ in Isaiah 53, when stating that the Servant (Messiah) would bear the sins of many.

¹⁹⁵This grants, of course, our earlier argument from Romans 5 that we do not sin in Adam.

¹⁹⁶My thanks to my friend, William Cook, for this interesting insight.

¹⁹⁷i.e., multiplying in knowledge and multiplying in having children.

¹⁹⁸It is interesting to note that the consequences in the Fall had an aspect of undesirable gain, even as the acquiring of the knowledge of good and evil proved to be, for man, an undesirable gain. For Adam the consequence was in the field; not only would desirable plants and fruit trees grow but everything else as well. The woman, too, suffered a multiplying of hardship; gestation and pain in the childbirth process would henceforth be increased.

¹⁹⁹See p. 560, footnote 222, regarding almah.

²⁰⁰In other words, in the hyperbolic layer of meaning David is the subject in the first clause and the intended referent of the prepositional phrase “in iniquity,” and is the object in the second clause in which his mother is the subject and the intended referent in the prepositional phrase, “in sin.”

²⁰¹again, at least at this particular level of meaning.

²⁰²It is interesting to note that the English “shapen” is the Hebrew word khool, which Strong defines as “to twist or whirl (in a circular or spiral manner), i.e., (spec.) to dance, to writhe in pain (esp. of parturition [childbirth].” The word is used in the Old Testament in all such senses as Strong describes it. For example, khool is rendered “wait” for when the dove is said to have “waited” after Noah brought it back inside the ark. It indicates not a quiet resting (as the English rendering suggests) but the kind of agitated perch-to-perch movement one sometimes sees in birds when they are caged. That is really the picture here in Psalm 51—one of agitation,and thus of writhing in the childbirth process; and it seems as if David’s use of the somewhat flexible word khool is meant to invoke a layered texture of meaning for verse 5, so that a literal, not just hyperbolic, meaning may be understood.

²⁰³This additional interpretation of an added layer of meaning within this layer of literal meaning of Psalm 51:5 is not necessary for the main argument for a subsidiary literal meaning. Nevertheless, we offer it as a possibility.

²⁰⁴No matter how far back the Calvinist wishes to push the problem of evil, there remains no solution for him. If Adam’s sin is to be blamed on Satan, then upon whom do we blame Satan’s sin? Thus the only rational solution to removing God from being the ultimate cause of evil is to insist that evil first came into existence ex nihilio by a person other than God.

²⁰⁵Observe that Noah in this same passage was given permission to eat animals for food. Thus animals are not made in the image of God; otherwise men who killed animals would have been subject to capital punishment.

^lxii Whitelaw, Thomas;( H.D.M. Spense and Joseph S. Excell, editors). The Pulpit Commentary. (London and New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, new edition, n.d.). Vol 1 (Genesis), p. 73.

^lxiii Finney, Charles G. Total Depravity.

[www.gospeltruth.net/1836SOIS/04sois_total_depravity.htm]; Part 1.

^lxivRoss, Bill and Carl Conrad. “Re: FW: Ef hWi and Indicative Tenses in Greek and English.”

The following exchange is dated January 5, 2000. [http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/ b-greek/2000-January/009388.html]

Bill:

The words EF hW are commonly translated “because.“ I personally object to this. In the same sentence Paul uses DIA for that purpose.

Carl:

In fact, however, DIA is not used so simply; DIA is used with TOUTO…

Bill:

I was thinking more of KAI DIA THS hAMARTIAS hO QANATOS where there is a cause and effect relationship. Here Paul says:

“DIA THS hAMRATIAS hO QANATOS”

and does not use that construction later.

Carl, are you saying that:

* DIA by itself is never used to say “because”?

* EF hW means the same as DIA TOUTO but not the same as DIA?

* EF hW cannot/will not translate to “upon which”?

* there is a grammatical reason why hW in Acts 7:53 refers back to TOPOS but hW in Romans 5:12 cannot refer back to QANATOS (or more properly, EIS PANTAS ANQROWPOUS hO ANATOS DIHLQEN)? (Paul follows this statement with a strikingly relevant subject:

Romans 5:14 ALLA EBASILEUSEN O QANATOS APO ADAM MECRI MWUSEWS KAI EPI TOUS ***MH MARTHSANTAS EPI TW OMOIWMATI THS PARABASEWS ADAM*** OS ESTIN TUPOS TOU MELLONTOS

Paul specifically tells us in the immediate context that death reigned on those who

*did not transgress* as per Adam.)

* EF hW intrinsically must mean “because” and cannot mean anything else?

* that any difference between EF hW and DIA is imaginary?

The words are literally “upon which“ as in Acts 7:33:

Acts 7:33 EIPEN DE AUTWi hO KURIOS: LUSON TO hUPODHMA TWN PODWN SOU, hO GAR TOPOS EF’ hWi hESTHKAS GH hAGIA ESTI

Carl:

EF’ hWi here is only superficially comparable to the adverbial conjunctive phrase EF’ hWi; here EPI is the preposition used with a locative dative “upon” and the hWi is in this instance a relative pronoun referring back to the antecedent TOPOS.

Bill:

Is there any difference in the words? Why can’t Paul be saying, figuratively, that PANTA were [standing] EP hWS [occurrence] when they sinned.

We agree that the subject is PANTA and the verb is hHMARTON is the verb. Does EF hW answer the question “why?” or “how?” or “when?” or (as I hold) “what precipitated it?” Or even, “What were the prevailing conditions?”

This leads me to the conclusion that, to Paul, the first phrase is the antecedent of the second, not the result. That is “all died, upon which [EF W] all sinned” not “all died, because [DIA] all sinned”

Carl:

Here are the four GNT texts wherein EF’ hWi appears, in every one of which the prepositional phrase EF’ hWi may legitimately be translated “because” or “since”:

Rom 5:12 DIA TOUTO hWSPER DI’ hENOS ANQRWPOU hH hAMARTIA EIS TON KOSMON EISHLQEN KAI DIA THS hAMAARTIAS hO QANATOS, KAI hOUTWS EIS PANTAS ANQRWPOUS hO QANATOS DIHLQEN, EF’ hWi PANTES hHMARTON (”… because/since they have all sinned”)

Bill:

“they have all sinned?” Or “all sinned?” Your translation of the aorist slants the reading of the text to require it to read in the past but that isn’t the way I would understand the translation of the aorist. This verse can only be understood as “because all sinned” if, in addition to a specious idiom, we accept very strange incongruous interpretations:

* participation of all men in Adam’s sin/transgression?? Then why must death “pass through” from Adam to them?

* death only to those of mankind who subsequently sin?? But death is attributed to Adam’s **transgression** [PARAPTWMA], not to a multitude of sins [hAMARTIAS]

Carl:

2 COR 5:4 KAI GAR hOI ONTES EN TWi SKHNEI STENAZOMEN BAROUMENOI, EF’ HWi OU QELOMEN EKDUSASQAI ALL’ EPENDUSASQAI, hINA KATAPOQHi TO QNHTON hUPO THS ZWHS. (”… because/since we don’t want to strip naked but rather to put on new clothes …”)

Bill:

You would read that “..we groan because/since we don’t want to strip naked”?

I don’t find that reasonable at all.

I prefer “We know that…we have an eternal house…we groan under our burdens. But upon this we do not desire to be unclothed, but rather to be clothed”

The UPON THIS refers back to what we know and what we have and provides the reason for the subsequent action — just as in Romans 5:12. Of course there is overlap in the sense with because, but UPON THIS is more precise in this context. We might find a meeting ground on some sense like “since this premise is true…” or “given this prerequisite” but not on “because” or “since.”

Carl:

Phil 3:12 OUC’ hOTI HDH ELABON H HDH TETELEIWMAI, DIWKW DE EI KAI KATALABW, EF’ hWi KAI KATELHMFQHN hUPO CRISTOU [IHSOU]. (”… because/since I too have been gripped firmly by Christ [Jesus].”)

Bill:

Might it not be:

“..I might also lay hold, on [account of] which also, I have been gripped by Christ Jesus”?

If so, then the sentence is one consistent thought instead of two joined by a pun. Paul is Christ’s “slave” and “prisoner” and the phrase is a synonym for DIA TOUTO as used here:

1 Tim 1:16 Howbeit **for this cause** [DIA TOUTO] I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.

1 Timothy 1:16 ALLA **DIA TOUTO** HLEHQHN INA EN EMOI PRWTW ENDEIXHTAI CRISTOS IHSOUS THN APASAN MAKROQUMIAN PROS UPOTUPWSIN TWN MELLONTWN PISTEUEIN EP AUTW EIS ZWHN AIWNION

Carl:

Phil 4:12 ECARHN DE EN KURIWi MEGALWS hOTI HDH POTE ANEQALETE TO hUPER EMOU FRONEIN, EF’ hWi KAI EFRONEITE, HKAIREISQE DE. (”… because/since you were indeed anxious (about me) but your timing was bad.”)

Bill:

Or rather, “upon which also you were thinking, but you were lacking opportunity”

or

“on [account of] which you were thinking…”

Carl:

In sum, there’s all the difference in the world between DIA TOUTO and EF’ hWi; the former means “for this reason” or “because of this” or “therefore”, while the latter means “because” or “since” and functions as an adverbial conjunction introducing the clause explaining the reason for what was just asserted.

Bill:

Are you setting out to show:

* EF hW has a “meaning” of “because” that must dictate the usage, or only that your notion is “plausible?”

* EF hW must always be read idiomatically as “because” or that it can be thus construed?

* EF hW is “defined” by four occurrences where “it may be legitimately translated” as “since,” (while on closer inspection, such a translation is really not as good as the literal “upon which”, or the idiom “on account of which”)?

Do you even concede that it could be legitimately translated any other way?

Is this “idiom” of “because” an established “fact” or just a hasty theory subject to investigation?

I think we would all benefit from a dip into the classic literature for examples of the phrase. Have you a tool that could supply examples?

Bill Ross

The following exchange is dated January 7, 2000.

[http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/2000-01

/34930.html]

Note: Bill has very wisely snipped items from a 17K off-list reply that I sent to his last on-list series of questions about our ongoing dispute over EF’ hWi as an adverbial conjunction introducing subordinate explanatory clauses.

At 8:55 PM -0600 1/6/00, Bill Ross wrote:

Bill:

Carl, I’ve had a lot of trouble with my email. I hope this finally gets through. It keeps saying your email server doesn’t exist??

Anyway, a simple question on your objection to my reading of EF hWi, that I thought might be of interest to the whole list:

Carl:

Yes. hWi in Acts 7:53 is masculine dative sg–dative to construe with EPI, masculine singular to agree with the antecendent TOPOS. Don’t be confused by the fact that hWi may be either masculine or neuter. In Acts 7:53 it is masculine; in the phrase EF’ hWi which I’ve been saying means “because” or “since” the hWi is technically neuter because TOUTWi hOTI which it represents and abbreviates is neuter.

Again, you’re insisting upon “which” as a relative pronoun but aren’t pointing to any noun, masculine or neuter, in what precedes that hWi could refer as to an antecedent.

Bill:

…Isn’t it common for a neuter relative pronoun to refer back to a clause, paragraph, section… with no regard to gender? For example, DIA TOUTO need not refer to any particular gender, correct? The reason I ask is that this is how I am seeing hWi being used — pointing to a clause such as:

EIS PANTAS ANQROWPOUS hO QANATOS DIHLQEN

Carl:

It is indeed common to refer back to a preceding clause, paragraph, section by using a neuter relative pronoun, particularly hO/ (the accented n.sg. rel. pron. as distinguished from the unaccented article, hO) and hA/ (the accented n.pl. rel. pron. as distinguished from the n. pl. article, TA).

BUT it is more common to refer back to a larger textual unit (clause, paragraph, section) by using a demonstrative neuter pronoun, e.g. DIA TOUTO, DIA TAUTA, DI’ EKEINO, DI’ EKEINA, KATA TOUTO, or the like. Far more common than those is it to use the conjunction hO/TI which originated as an indirect interrogative pronoun, a compound of the relative pronoun n.sg. hO/ and the indefinite n. sg. pronoun TI. So common is this usage of hO/TI in fact that a useful convention developed (for which I’m not sure whether grammarians or editors/printers bear the greater responsibility) to distinguish the form used as a conjunction, hO/TI by writing/printing it as a single word from the form used as an indefinite relative/interrogative pronoun, hO/ TI, which was written/printed as two words. I might add that this usage of what was originally a relative pronoun as a conjunction introducing a subordinate clause is a common development in many IE languages (Latin QUOD, German DASS, French QUE, Italian CHE, English THAT, etc.).

BUT I do NOT believe that EF’ hWi when used to introduce a subordinate clause is EVER used to refer back to a larger textual unit (clause, paragraph, section); while you may see an instance where the hWi is masculine sg. relative pronoun referring back to a masculine antecedent noun (Acts 7:53 hWi with TOPOS) or where a hHi refers back to a feminine antecedent noun (Luke 11:22 THN PANOPLIAN AIREI EF’ hHI EPEPOIQEI …), I do not believe a clear instance will be found wherein the neuter relative pronoun object of EPI refers back to a textual unit larger than a concrete noun.

Also…

Carl [continues]:

I don’t understand what you mean by “understand the TRANSLATION of the aorist;” are you trying to tell me that the aorist here is not referring to Past time? My own reason for preferring to translate the aorist here as “have sinned” is to underscore the totality of the acts of human sinning. I have no idea in the world what you mean to imply about the difference from “all have sinned” that “all sinned” implies for understanding how the aorist is used here.

Bill:

Though many allow for the addition of the word “have” for the aorist, I prefer to reserve that for the perfect. In this situation, where the question being answered is whether men sinned “at some point in time (allowing for each individually) or “upon Adam’s sinning” (in the past and impacting the present) it seems unreasonable to relax the distinction between aorist and perfect.

[Note: The following, though not introduced with Carl’s name, must be assumed to be his nevertheless, since he continues to state that he doesn’t understand the distinction that his colleague is trying to make in the translation of the aorist.]

[Carl:]

I still don’t understand the distinction you mean to draw here between “they all sinned” and “they have all sinned” for PANTES hHMARTON in Rom 5:12 DIA TOUTO hWSPER DI’ hENOS ANQRWPOU hH hAMARTIA EIS TON KOSMON EISHLQEN KAI DIA THS hAMAARTIAS hO QANATOS, KAI hOUTWS EIS PANTAS ANQRWPOUS hO QANATOS DIHLQEN, EF’ hWi PANTES hHMARTON. But so long as you grant that hHMARTON does refer to the sinning of all humanity in time past, I am content.

But this does raise another matter of the difference between English and Greek tense usage that I think is worth clarifying, although it doesn’t bear that directly on the question originally in dispute in the present exchange (and that’s why I’ve added to the subject-header). I would contend that the Greek aorist form hHMARTON may legitimately be translated either as “they sinned” or “they have sinned.” If so, does that mean there’s no real distinction between hHMARTON and hHMARTHKASI? My own view (and I’ve expressed it previously in this forum) is that in actual practice this distinction between aorist and perfect to express perfective past action has largely disappeared—and that is one reason why the perfect tense is relatively rare, namely: the aorist has usurped one of the chief functions of the perfect tense. On the other hand, I think the perfect tense hHMARTHKASI retains a distinct function when it underscores the present ongoing consequence of the action referred to; thus hHMARTHKASI may be translated into English as “they have sinned” (as could also, I think hHMARTON) but hHMARTHKASI bears the additional implication: their sin—and their consequent guilt—remains in effect even now. My point, to reiterate it by stating it differently, is that there is an ambiguity in the English perfect tense form “they have sinned” just as there is in the Latin perfect PECCAVERUNT and in the Greek aorist hHMARTON in that each of these forms may represent the simple fact of past action and also the completeness of the past action. But there’s a distinct sense in which these perfect tenses express resultant present state—and this sense is not so often uppermost in view as it is in Latin VIXERUNT = “Their life is over with—they’re dead” or Vergil’s FUIT ILIUM = “Troy has had its existence and is no more.” I think that this distinct stative sense tends to be preserved in the Koine Greek perfect tense when it is actually used, but that (apart from forms like hESTHKA and OIDA which are understood and used as present tense even though their morphology is perfect-tense) the perfect tense survives the other common sense of the perfect tense—completion of action in the past—is regularly expressed in the aorist indicative. I don’t really think I’m saying anything new here but that I’m simply calling attention to a fact about Koine usage of the perfect and aorist tenses that is already pretty well attested in the grammars. Wallace, for instance seems to me to be right on target regarding this function of the aorist (I don’t have the page ## as I’m drawing on the AcCordance software version):

“III. Consummative (Culminative, Ecbatic, Effective) Aorist

“A. Definition

“The aorist is often used to stress the cessation of an act or state. Certain verbs, by their lexical nature, virtually require this usage.11 For example, “he died” is usually not going to be an ingressive idea. The context also assists in this usage at times; it may imply that an act was already in progress and the aorist then brings the action to a conclusion. This is different from a consummative perfect, for the latter places the stress on (a) completion of the action, not merely cessation;12 and especially (b) continuing results after the completion of the action.”

Nearly two years later there was an exchange

between Carl Conrad and Steve Lo Vullo

[http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2001-December/019484.html]

On Monday, December 3, 2001, at 06:40 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

Steven, I think that here the hWi doesn’t have an antecedent in what precedes but is rather a fairly common elliptical expression with antecedent pressed into the relative (or relative attracted into the case of the implicit antecedent demonstrative): EF’ hWi = EPI TOUTWi hWI “because of this: that” or “because”; I think this EF’ hWi has come to be an adverbial conjunction in its own right, much like hOTI [in] its wide-ranging usage as a conjunction derivative ultimately from a relative pronoun.

Other instances:

2 Cor 5:4 KAI GAR hOI ONTES EN TWi SKHNEI STENAZOMEN BAROUMENOI, EF’ hWi OU QELOMEN EKDUSASQAI ALL’ EPENDUSASQAI, hINA KATAPOQHi TO QNHTON hUPO THS ZWHS.

Phil 3:12 OUC hOTI HDH ELABON H HDH TETELEIWMAI, DIWKW DE EI KAI KATALABW, EF’ hWi KAI KATELHMFQHN hUPO CRISTOU [IHSOU].

Phil 4:10 ECARHN DE EN KURIWi MEGALWS hOTI HDH POTE ANEQALETE TO hUPER EMOU FRONEIN, EF’ hWi KAI EFRONEITE, HKAIREISQE DE.

[Steven:]

Carl:

Thanks for your response. Yes, these examples are pretty convincing, especially since in the first two cases there is no explicit substantive whatsoever to serve as an antecedent, and in the third example none that makes any sense. Some have proposed ANQRWPOU as the antecedent in Rom 5.12 (since hWi can be masculine), but the more I read the passage, the more unlikely this seems, the relative being so far removed (compared to, say, Acts 7.33, where EF’ hWi follows immediately upon its antecedent, TOPOS).