James Pelton writes,”
Sin is a moral, spiritual rebellion against God—not a biological condition.
“Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.”
— James 1:14, ESV
Bret responds,
And you’re saying desire is completely unrelated to our biology? When a man lusts for a woman is there nothing about biology in that?
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Gen. 3:6
Are you saying there was no biology in those desires? Come on James … this is a sign that you are Gnostic.
You are divorcing things that cannot be divorced. They can be distinguished but not divorced.
James Pelton writes,
Can anger issues run in families? Yes—but that’s temperament or learned behavior, not guilt for sin. A quick temper might be genetic. But sinning in anger is a choice, not an inheritance.
Romans 5:12 says sin entered through Adam, and all die because all sinned—not because they got the “sin gene.”
Bret responds,
Certainly anger can be a learned behavior but it can also be a genetic trait and finally it can be both. Do you think everything is nurture holding that nature doesn’t exist? If you do that is Gnostic. Gnosticism eliminates the corporeal reality of existence and makes those realities unimportant. That’s what I see you doing by denying that creationally God has put us in particular peoples — with all their strengths and weaknesses. Those creational categories (nature) are restored (made what they were always intended to be in their best expression) by grace. Anger for example, can become resolve.
James Pelton writes,
Traducianism is the view that the soul is generated along with the body from the parents—not specially created by God at each conception. It explains how we inherit a sin nature, but not that sin is in our DNA.
Bret responds,
Was David’s lust for Bathsheba a lust that existed without cooperation from his DNA?
James Pelton writes
I would affirm:
-Sin is a spiritual problem
-We are responsible for our own sin
Genetics may influence behavior, but they don’t cause sin
Bret responds,
If genetics is influencing your behavior, then it is causal in sin. Now, of course our spiritual sin nature is moving our biological desires but one can’t say that genetics influence behavior and as the same time say it is not causal in the least.
You chaps want to make this vast divide between the spiritual and the corporeal. However, God made us as whole beings. Distinctions can be made but you chaps are divorcing the spiritual from the corporeal. That, James, is Gnostic like.
James Pelton really reaches,
Otherwise, you’d be saying Jesus would’ve inherited sin through Mary’s genetics—which Scripture and the early church reject.
Bret responds,
That would only be the case if one didn’t believe that God supernaturally worked so as Jesus did not inherit a sin nature. God, Scripture records, does the miraculous.
James Pelton writes,
When someone gets saved, they remain biologically male or female, Jew or Gentile, black or white. Your body and ethnicity don’t vanish.
But Scripture is clear that in Christ, those categories are no longer ultimate.
Bret responds,
There the Gnosticism is again.
Here is John Calvin on that subject;
“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”
John Calvin (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3)
Are you a flighty scatterbrained dreamer James?
James Pelton wrote,
“You have put off the old self… and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew… but Christ is all, and in all.”
— Colossians 3:9–11, ESV
This isn’t Gnosticism, this is orthodox
Bret responds,
But the new self that is being put on is consistent with who God creationally made me to be. Grace restores nature James.
You are Cultural Marxist orthodox. You are not Biblically orthodox.
Rev. 21:22 But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine [l]in it, for the [m]glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. 24 And the nations [n]of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor [o]into it.
