Archive for ‘Student Posts’

Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” provides a great explanation for evolutionary psychology and the existence of man. However, the theory is not substantial enough to fit into any category really because Darwin saw no purpose in why this process occurs. It just simply does. Therefore, that makes it difficult to understand the existence of surviving creatures and societies through a Creation lens because the created things just die off or survive- without meaning. The Fall lens doesn’t fit (although I could possibly be reasoned) because the species are not dying off for any particular reason other than that they cannot out survive another species. Redemption and Restoration imply a sense of bringing something back, fulfilling a purpose. Because Darwin saw life as purposeless and without design for an end goal, there is no need; and further, no understanding of redemption or restoration. For these reasons, I find that Spencer’s understanding of Darwinism to be more complete and to provide a perspective into the New Creation lens of understanding. “To Spencer evolution has a purpose; it is the mechanism by which perfection is approximated”. New Creation implies a renewal of God’s whole creation. While Darwinism does not include *all *of creation, it does bring about a level of renewal. Traits and species are perfected over time, passed along. According to Spencer, “if the principles of evolution are allowed to operate freely, all living organisms will approximate perfection”. In theory, all things should be able to attain perfection. It is possible to screen Social Darwinism as an influence/understanding of the Fall. Primarily so for reasons such as the fact that in actuality, evolution does not bring *all *things to perfection (only those that survive) and then the future impact it had on American Individualism and Capitalism. Not to say that Individualism and Capitalism is bad, but the understanding of laissez-faire, free competition is often criticized by the media and certain political circles. They may classify the implications of Spencer’s theory to the Fall. However, I think with his original intentions, Social Darwinism best fits New Creation.

It might be easy to associate evolution with Charles Darwin and think of no one else, but what about Herbert Spencer? Seven years before Darwin ever publishes Origin of Species, Spencer expresses his own theory in an article called ‘The Development Hypothesis.’ One of his main points is that creation is a myth; it has no basis in fact. What do Christians say to this, looking at creation in Genesis?  Many believe the creation story is a metaphor for something bigger…in some ways, a myth that explains some of the larger aspects of Christianity like the fall, our role in the world, God’s character. For Christians who accept this, Spencer’s criticism does not completely eliminate the validity of their faith, for they could believe in creation theories other than the literal Biblical interpretation. For Christians who do accept the creation story in Genesis as literal truth, they can argue that indeed, there is evidence to back their faith. For example, some argue the Bible was written by real people who existed in history and therefore the stories in the Bible are real and true as well. Obviously there are deeper arguments for both of these views, I am only skimming over them.

Spencer becomes more specific in another argument from this article when he says, “surely, if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.” I think it is important for Christians to think about evolution. Some Christians I meet will either immediately declare evolution as wrong because they feel it goes against the Bible, or, because they have never read about or researched it; they judge without knowing what they judge. Some ignore the topic altogether. Some do not want to get involved. Some believe that however the world was created, that truth does not affect our active relationship with God right now, it should not affect how we live our lives.

I believe that David Hume’s ideas represent the fall of man. The first of his views that I believe fall into this category is his belief that humans only have knowledge of things that we directly experience. As Christians, we all have experienced events in our lives that we truly know God provided for us even though we don’t directly see his physical hand reach down from raven and help us. Because this experience is subjective, Hume would argue that it wasn’t real. The second of his ideas that represent the fall of man is his moral sense theory. He was a sentimentalist, meaning he thought no one knew the true mending of morality and people just acted as they pleased. He thought that our actions were ultimately driven by our passions. This completely goes against all of God’s teaching concerning morality. Morality is specifically addressed in a multitude of scriptures in the bible. The Ten Commandments explain God’s view of morality. Jesus and Paul both have teachings about morality throughout the New Testament. Hume’s idea of morality is the complete opposite of all morality teachings from the bible, therefore I would equate that with the fall. Sent from my iPhone

“Kant’s life was a life of thought,” says Henley (p. 180). This is undoubtedly true as we see what major contributions to philosophy, psychology and religion he has given us. Kant goes against the ideas of Hume (that nothing is certain because everything we know comes from subjective experience) to create his own theology. He claims that humans think about things in certain ways because there was already something that existed before subjective experience to show how to think about them. He explains this in his categories of thought: “those innate attributes of the mind…that explain subjective experiences we have that cannot be explained in terms of sensory experiences alone…(p. 193).” Kant believes humans have knowledge to some extent about the workings of the world, before they ever experience it. This makes me put Kant’s ideas under the category of Creation. I think about how God created us. How we are able to be convicted, how we have an innate sense of what is right and wrong, how some things we just know. There are things in us humans that have not been taught. As C.S. Lewis argues in Mere Christianity, “a man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line…If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

Kant believes the human mind creates the universe. He looks at morality therefore as something each mind is aware of and has the choice to act upon. His categorical imperative is similar to the golden rule in that all humans should act upon the moral maxims they have set up to hold others accountable to. Kant’s ideas about humanity and how we are created have similarities with Christian theology but his view of God’s role in our lives and how we were created differs.

Immanuel Kant and his contributions to Rationalism are profound. His work has come up in my Ethics class, a business class, and several psychology classes. The material covered in each of these courses is similar, mostly pertaining to his Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative asserts that “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (pg 195). To begin, a notion of universality underlies Kant’s thinking. While the Categorical Imperative is a predominant outcome of Kant’s work, it is just one reflection of his understanding of the mind. Kant believed that the mind exists but can not be studied; we we have knowledge of the physical world but will never experience it directly. Further, he believed that sensory data is necessary, however, something that he termed “categories of thought” have to add to the data a priori in order for knowledge to be attained. There is a schism that is present. He stresses the need for universality to explain the morality of decisions and yet also states that our minds are not whole, all knowing things that have complete understanding. That makes it difficult to reach a universal conclusion. For this reason I classify Kant and his understanding of the mind in the Fall. Kant’s understanding of sensory impressions and categories of thought influences our phenomenological experiences. Our minds are claimed to be the center of the universe and all other physical things are just details that we cannot fully understand or know. Creation characterized the original union between God, man, and all that God created. There was a fullness of knowledge and understanding- I cannot help but wonder at the fact that maybe man and God once shared knowledge. After the Fall a brokenness incurred and Kant’s stance on the fence of empiricism and rationalism shows the division present in his attempt to understand the mind. Many arguments could be presented that Kant best fits instead with Redemption because of his attempt to explain the realities/existences of time and space. The formulation of the perceptions draws Kant and those who take on his views back to a union in understanding the internal world that Kant emphasized and the external world that Kant recognized. For this blog’s purposes though, I think I will stick to the Fall category because of the underlying desire to explain and permit things in a universal way (attributing to something greater) while recognizing that divisions in mental processing exists which make a universal understanding difficult. Maybe I could just settle and say that because Kant even felt the need to understand morality at all means that immorality exists and immorality is a result of the Fall.

Johannes Gutenberg, due to his invention of the movable type printing press, was very influential during the Renaissance. Thanks to his printing press and his *Gutenberg Bible*, people were no longer forced to rely on the church to spoon feed them the scriptures. There was then questioning of the Catholic church as to why the sermons were still being delivered in Latin, rather than in a text than everyone understood. The invention of the printing press also spurred the religious Reformation that took place because the people now had access to information that they could not previously obtain or understand. Most people were illiterate due to the fact that literature was not common or widespread prior to the printing press, but Gutenberg’s invention encouraged literacy as well. With newfound literacy and more readily available printed information, the people did not have to rely so heavily upon the word of the Catholic church.

Niccolò Machiavelli should be considered under the fall. His views about how a good leader does not always have to do a good deeds as long as his people are shown the proper way show how he can neglect morals for a greater good. Although his thoughts where shown to be more under redemption, his methods of the people he wrote about in his book the prince did not fallow moral code leading to the fall. Because he did not believe in the wellness of man but the wellness of the state over man his views where not that of an individual being more important than the greater good. When a person does not get his needs met the strength of that man’s community suffers leading his views to be wrong. He should be places under the fall because of the things he values in a proper leader. If a country is ruled under a iron fist then it is bound to decline in the long run leading his views to be placed under the fall.

It is interesting to apply Isaac Newton’s theology to the C-F-R-R model. In Newton’s eyes, God abandons the world after he forms it, leaving humans to be and do what they will. He experiments, studies and observes the universe, discovering laws and principles that explain how the universe works. So instead of humans interacting with God through faith, prayer, supplication, etc., Newton believes that it is through understanding the universe objectively that one understands God. In a way, I think this is Newton’s form of redemption. Humans are created and then left to their own devices, alone in a mysterious world. It is through studying the world that humans become closer to God. In our text book, one Principle of Newtonian Science is this: “Natural laws are absolute, but at any given time our understanding is imperfect. Therefore, scientists often need to settle for probabilities rather than certainty. This is because of human ignorance, not because of any variance in natural laws (p. 107).” Newton acknowledges that humans are not perfect, he sees that humans will never be able to fully understand everything. Humans are limited. This might sound similar to how the Church has been claiming the same for years and years, that God works in mysterious ways, that there are so many unknowns in the world, that people should be satisfied living in the dark… However, while Newton is familiar with these limitations, he refuses to accept them. His curiosity is not subdued, and answers ARE found. What a revolution! Maybe the Church thought this was the fall of humans? But you can see now how people begin to look at religion- look at God- differently. How science soars and religion is questioned. In this lies a restoration of knowledge, a restoration of human potential that has been squandered in the past. 

Plato’s Theory of Forms is a response to the fall to bring redemption to the world.  Plato’s Allegory of the Cave attempts to show that there is a higher reality than what we perceive in the physical world.  His Theory of Forms states that everything in the empirical world is a manifestation of a pure form (idea) that exists in the abstract.  I think this idea is a way to redeem the shallow way that “thoughtless” people live their lives.  Plato introduced the concept that thought, ideas, or knowledge enhance the way people live.  While this seems fairly obvious in our post-platonic world, this idea was revolutionary in the way that people viewed life and the pursuit of knowledge.  He believed that an object’s essence was equated with its form, and you could only know an object’s purpose with the knowledge of its form.  This was a revolutionary way to view the world.  He believed that the soul had a rational component that was immortal, so in a sense, immortal rationality and knowledge redeems the futility and transience of the purely physical world.  If a person suppresses the needs of the body and concentrates on rational pursuits, he would free the soul from the adulterations of the flesh.  This idea may have informed the Christian idea of the duality of body and soul- that to deny the flesh is to enhance the soul, which is a manifestation of the fallen world of “flesh” being redeemed to a higher reality of the “spirit.”

Freud and the Fall

The theories Freud pose clearly reveals our tendency to sin and therefore maintain a sinful structure throughout our lives.  When the Fall of Man occurred we were stripped of our right to a perfect existence, because of this Fall, Freud portrayed in his psychological theories that we as a people become sinful in nature at a young age.  This is only possible by Man’s inability to manage a complete and fulfilling lifestyle.  Freud suggests that as children, the stages that we cannot fully develop through cause our sin to manifest at a later age.  In a perfect world with no sin, our development would be unblemished.  For instance, people who struggle with developing self-awareness and self -confidence, were in Freud’s theory stuck in the phallic stage.  The Phallic stage occurs between the ages of 3 and 6 and if individuals are not allowed by some force to move on from this stage, occurrences such as promiscuity and women and overly aggression in men.  If we were a society of Godly creatures, these issues would not exist.  The evidence of the Fall of Man is clearly portrayed in Freud’s Psychoanalytic theories.

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