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If Adam would have lived forever physically but for his ill-fated bite of fruit (despite never picking any fruit off of the tree of life), it would follow that physical death was the result of his choice and physical death was the curse placed on his progeny. That raises the interesting...

I'm pretty sure the "form of God" reference was Wayne222's nod to Philippians 2:6-7.

Yet read literally, Gen: 2:16-17 permitted eating of the fruit of the tree of life. Whether Adam ever did so is not recorded. But let's assume he never did. Verse 17 still admonishes that IF he eats of the tree of knowledge he will die, which suggests that if he hadn't taken a bite, he would...

Your approach makes great sense. Aulén’s Christus Victor argues that the early Church Fathers did not hold to the ransom theory as a payment to Satan, but as a ransom from the bondage of sin in general. I haven’t read their writings in sufficient depth to know whether he is correct. Either...

Fair enough. I just can't help probing the reasons behind everything. It's how I'm wired.

This is an important question that deserves its own thread. (We have already hijacked the OP here!)

Very good observation, @Wrangler. When I deliver closing arguments to juries in civil cases, I describe the "preponderance of the evidence" burden by contrasting it with the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of criminal cases. I say something like "In the criminal standard 'beyond a...

It is certainly true that criminal convictions usually turn on circumstantial evidence -- but the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. Faith is not like that. If every proposition we must take on faith were circumstantially provable beyond a reasonable doubt, there would be little...

I think we are talking past each other. I don't disagree that the wages of sin is death, and we deserved death. The sinless Christ did not deserve it. He volunteered for it anyway, and God allowed him to be killed in our stead. We agree on that much. And for present purposes I will even go...

Can you share it?

The "requirement" of the sacrificial lamb is the crux of the issue. In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (Graebner trans., Zondervan 1949), Luther comments on Gal. 3:20: “We are the offending party; God is the party offended. The offense is of such a nature that God cannot pardon...

As a beneficiary of the atonement, I'm certainly not complaining! I'm just struggling with an apparent injustice of the choice of methods.

And my question is, WHY was there no other way for the omnipotent, all-loving Father to pull it off? Several theories have been advanced to explain what happened on Calvary, all of them using the language of “payment” in describing the sacrifice. The “ransom” theory, see Matt. 20:28/Mark 10:45...

And I am testing whether that forgiveness could have been accomplished, if God so desired, without the UNjust punishment of the innocent for the guilty.

A little bit. But it's who I am. I test everything for rationality. Children believe in all sorts of irrational things pushed on them by authority figures. They don't or can’t question in the same way adults do. Maybe Matt. 18:3 is an insidious verse inserted by the author to cut off the...

I would use co-conspirator rather than accomplice, but lets go with your word. Who are the accomplices? Christ and whom? Christ and mankind? Christ and the Father? If Christ was an accomplice to mankind's sin and therefore somehow guilty so as to deserve punishment, then 1 John 3:5, 1 Peter...

OK, this one is gonna shock you: John 9:22 relates that the parents of the blind man whose sight Jesus had restored “were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” (A similar reference occurs later...

Let's not delude ourselves that "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son" to do a bit of preaching and perform some miracles, and it came as a complete surprise to God that the Jews and Romans crucified Christ for it. That was always the Father's plan.

If I am intellectually indolent, I'd want to be corrected. But as it stands, I just do not mind human error on immaterial factual details, as long as the theological message is unaffected. Do we really care whether the centurion who wanted Jesus to heal his servant approached Jesus in person...

The question is not whether we are just. It's whether God is just in crucifying Christ for our sins. Here is an all-loving Supreme Being who could, if He wished, just forgive all sin with a waive of His metaphorical hand, but chose instead to have His Son brutally murdered. Call it what you...