I’m delighted to have had the chance to chat today with author and retired parish priest Addison Hodges Hart (more here and here) along with Wheaton College art history professor Matthew Milliner (more here and here) about the concept of a meta-historical human fall.
Thanks for this Jesse. Really enjoyed listening in on the three of you talking it through. You didn’t use the term but do you think it’s helpful to think of the Fall as ontological?
Also it would be good to hear you all consider that while Genesis is obviously a Hebrew text, as far as I know there was no Hebrew notion of the Fall. Not all Christians seem to realise how they read Genesis christologically via Paul. Paul seems to give it a new and unique meaning ?
Merry Christmas! Two very helpful points in your comments. Thank you! Indeed, it is very helpful to point out that the human fall is a Christian category via Paul and that it is revealed only in the Light of Christ. Of course Hebrew theology had plenty of images of exile and return which have a lot of overlap, and I might suspect that there are some ideas and images of multiple angelic falls before Christ. However, the idea of all creation groaning in labor pains as a result of human sin comes only with Christ as Paul expounds the implications.
Also, yes, an ontological fall is the most clear way to state one part of my own claim, and lines up with the "alterism" that I mention as a term used by Alexander V. Khramov in his 2017 article on evolution in the International Journal of Orthodox Theology where he makes the case that all of the church fathers taught some kind of "alterism" up through the late Augustine who first introduced a variety of "perseverism."
Thanks for this Jesse. Really enjoyed listening in on the three of you talking it through. You didn’t use the term but do you think it’s helpful to think of the Fall as ontological?
Also it would be good to hear you all consider that while Genesis is obviously a Hebrew text, as far as I know there was no Hebrew notion of the Fall. Not all Christians seem to realise how they read Genesis christologically via Paul. Paul seems to give it a new and unique meaning ?
Thanks again.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas! Two very helpful points in your comments. Thank you! Indeed, it is very helpful to point out that the human fall is a Christian category via Paul and that it is revealed only in the Light of Christ. Of course Hebrew theology had plenty of images of exile and return which have a lot of overlap, and I might suspect that there are some ideas and images of multiple angelic falls before Christ. However, the idea of all creation groaning in labor pains as a result of human sin comes only with Christ as Paul expounds the implications.
Also, yes, an ontological fall is the most clear way to state one part of my own claim, and lines up with the "alterism" that I mention as a term used by Alexander V. Khramov in his 2017 article on evolution in the International Journal of Orthodox Theology where he makes the case that all of the church fathers taught some kind of "alterism" up through the late Augustine who first introduced a variety of "perseverism."