If this wording is significant, then "it was very good" implies that God created man perfect -- without any fault, weakness, or evil tendency. God, who is all-powerful, omnipresent, and all-knowing, is also of perfect intelligence and ability, and utterly holy in thought and intention. Then how could His creation, generated from the very nature of His being, be anything less than perfect?

Still, Adam fell. How could this perfect creature, possessed with great intelligence and a yet unduplicated knowledge of God and intimacy of relationship with Him, act in willful and deliberate disobedience to Him? Was he, as has been conjectured, unaware of the magnitude of his crime and its effect upon the future of his race?  (But a sin of ignorance would have been forgiven.)  Or was his sin due to some inherent fault or oversight on the part of his Creator? If man was thereafter in need of redemption -- as he is now -- in what way did man, in falling from grace, change?

Two theologians have shaped the theology of the Fall of Man more profoundly than all others. John Calvin (1509-1564) upheld the sovereignty of God in an absolute foreknowledge of future events. Man's actions, in turn, were absolutely predestined. Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), however, while maintaining God's foreknowledge, nevertheless emphasized man's free will. The opinions of these distinguished rivals, along with other influential scholars, will be considered in this discussion.

The remainder of this article is now included in:

Christ in Us:  The Exalted Christ and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit How does the Holy Spirit indwell the believer, and why should one seek that experience?  In this collection of articles based on over twenty years' personal experience as well as academic study, the author relates Spirit Baptism and spiritual gifts to their source, the exalted Jesus Christ.  He describes this Exaltation of Christ and constructs a theory of how the Holy Spirit indwells the believer, drawing from psychology and medical science as well as Scripture.  Finally, he proposes a new Theology of Exaltation that sees the whole sweep of church history as the ongoing glorification of Christ and Redemption of the world. ISBN 978-0-6151-3840-4 paperback, 192 pp., 6 x 9 in., with index and appendices.

God's Trombone Books by Paul Hughes

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Adam's Initial State
3. The Question of the Will
4. The Change in Man

Sources

1. Dr. John Taylor, quoted in Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, ed. Clyde A. Holbrook (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)

2. Henry C. Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology, rev. by Vernon D. Doerksen (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979)

3. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1948)

4. C. I. Scofield et al., The New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)

5. Clyde L. Manschreck, ed., Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes 1555 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982)

6. James Nichols, ed., The Writings of James Arminius, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1956)

7. Edwards, Original Sin

8. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)

9. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1948)

Publications Index	Pneumatikos Main Page	Newsletter Index