Defining Life in the Spiritual Lane

Spirituality Column #184
May 18, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Defining Life in the Spiritual Lane
By Bob Walters

Our Wednesday night Bible study weathered a lively exchange recently regarding whether human beings were mortal or immortal before “The Fall” of Adam and Eve.

Most of us in the Western church assume that if not for the sin of Adam and Eve, we would physically live for ever. Death, Genesis 3 seems to say, only entered the world after Adam and Eve’s sin of trying to be like God without God: eating from the tree of “God’s knowledge” at Satan’s tempting against God’s strict orders not to.

It turns out there is more than one school of thought on original immortality, even though most of us have heard only the one above. At issue are a couple of fairly major topics:

- God’s intention of Natural life vs. Spiritual life

- God’s intention of death in Creation.

Our teacher – a former Cambridge lecturer, Bible translator, and expert on Eastern Orthodoxy – cited Patristic (Church Fathers) sources suggesting that God created humans as He did all other life, to live a natural life and die a natural death. What makes humans the “image of God” is our spiritual immortality, not our physical immortality. It’s our Spirit life that sin puts to death, and our Spiritual death that Jesus Christ hung on the Cross to defeat.

This our instructor said to a room full of thoughtful Evangelicals, schooled in “Sin Brought Death,” not “Natural Death Happens Anyway.” It was a split, animated discussion. It was Western St. Augustine vs. Eastern St. Athanasius.

Evangelicals like straight, dependable answers, with straight, dependable definitions for faith’s day-to-day questions: What is sin? What is forgiveness? What is grace? What is life? What is death? What is salvation?

Thing is, anyone can learn “about” God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, church history, other religions, meditation, faith systems, theology. For these pursuits, definitions are helpful and can make religion seem easy, if superficial. Defining a relationship – actually knowing someone, like God, for example – defies labels.

God’s goal is not our mastery of definitions or doctrine. God is hungry for our loving, freely-found relationship with Him through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit; and our love for each other.

God gave us a brain to discover Him, and learn. Let’s not sell God, or ourselves, short with narrow definitions. There is a big history of Christianity that precedes modern religious “definitions.” Learn, and love, all you can.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is going to read “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark Noll, and will report back.