A figure of original sin

CrimsonCatholic has made some interesting statements regarding original sin (OS) here. I appreciate his conversation b/c it is allowing me to work out a better understanding of the issue.

I don't see any authority elsewhere in Scripture for the proposition that someone who has not committed actual sin was punished by damnation, so it seems to be a matter of speculative reasoning.

In one sense, you're right that the case where some guy was born with original sin but never sinned HIMSELF in life and came to be judged either yea or nay by God has come up in Scripture.
OTOH, does not Rom 5 have explicit statements regarding his guilt? I don't see you dealing with Rom 5 at all in this comment, though I've pointed it out as important a couple of times and stated some initial points in a previous comment in the same thread.

You say that Jesus suffers by substitution or by being a sin offering,

We might be missing each other here.
Jesus suffers because He's the substitute for the elect. He suffers really, physically, spiritually, etc. Hopefully that clears up any confusion.

The entire idea of a substitution or a sin offering is a metaphor; it is not literal, because the person who actually committed the sin is not being punished.

I am sorry, but this is a strange thing to say.
Substitution is not literal b/c the guy for whom the substitute is provided doesn't suffer? Isn't that the point of substitution? Why would the recipient of the benefit of substitution suffer? Why would that change anything about the nature of the suffering of the substitute?

they would entail Jesus being punished for actual sin, which is clearly absurd by both reason and Scripture, since He never actually sinned

Agreed that He never sinned.
But He suffered for **MY** actual sin and the actual sins of all.

Hence, the passages cannot be literal and must be figurative.

Leaving aside that I deny the premises above, if it must be figurative, what is it a figure of? What is the greater reality to which it points, as all symbols do?

To put any sort of actual evil within the nature would make God its author, which is impossible.

Actual evil within the SIN nature (that's to clarify)? Why would God be the author of that? Sin was performed by a fallen angel and then a human. It's a corruption of God-given goodness, not created by Him. Romans 7 (as I also mentioned earlier) describes how it's the "law within my members", struggling against the Spirit-controlled "law of my mind".

The only places in the Scripture which describe men as "guilty" or "sinful" or "condemned" are clearly analogical and not literal.

I'm questioning your arrival at that, so I guess we go there.
Besides, I'll reiterate that you're not even interacting with Rom 5 here.

Jesus doesn't literally become sinful,

You're just repeating a rebuttal to a point that I don't make.
He literally becomes a sin OFFERING. A literal substitute. The Lamb of God.

He doesn't literally suffer punishment, and He is not literally judged.

OK, so He doesn't *literally* die on the cross.
His passion and death is not *literally* painful. They're figurative.
Is our forgiveness of sin based on His non-literal death therefore non-literal as well?

there cannot be any changes in the relationship between them (the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, eternally loved by the Father, etc).

Fine and dandy, but the persons of the Trinity DO different things throughout history. The Holy Spirit now indwells all believers as opposed to what He did in the OT. The Spirit gave spectacular sign gifts to the church, which He didn't do before, and He's not doing the same thing in the same way right now. The Son became incarnate in real space and time. The Son died on the Cross. The Son now, and for eternity in the future, has and will have a physical body.

the Father judging the Son as a sinner

As a sin *offering*. This changes your entire point.

There is no question of wrath or judgment of the Son

I'd say the question is whether the PUNISHMENT for sin, the wrath of God, comes UPON Christ.
1 Pet 2:24 - He bore our sins
Heb 13:13 - bearing the disgrace He bore
Heb 9:28 - Christ bears the sins of many
John 3:36 - the wrath of God abides on the guy who doesn't believe, but somehow not on Jesus, Who substitutes in place of the sinner who does believe?
Same thing in Rom 2:5, Rom 3:5, Rom 4:15, Rom 5:8-10, Eph 2:2-5, Eph 5:6, Col 3:6, 1 Thess 1:10, 1 Thess 2:15-17, etc.

Rhology: Was the Cross God's Plan B?
Certainly, in the sense that evil is never intended directly but only accidentally and conditionally.

Wow. May I ask *when* God's hand and purpose predestined Christ's passion and crucifixion to occur? From eternity past? Or right after the fall?

Supralapsarian Calvinists deny this

And so do I.

There is no evidence to the contrary

Except Rom 5 et al.

The GHM derives its validity from the truths of natural reason, so using any conclusion of the GHM to deny natural reason is irrational.

This is a side note, as we both acknowledge. That said, I wasn't contrasting the GHM with "reason". I was contrasting it with heavy-handed and clumsy uses of the expression "literal interpretation".

But it's an insult to God to say that He is asking you to deny what is known by the same natural reason that He gave you.

For the sake of argument, I grant that here. But when one has good reason (ie, divine revelation DIRECTLY speaking to the topic) to think A and human "reason" says B, one has to go A. There's a reason why 1 Cor 1-3 was written.


And for the grand finale, I'll just put these words of CrimsonCatholic here in boldface. Or should I say baldface?

To put it another way, you don't need the Bible to do what God gave you a brain today. If you make reason dependent on the Bible, then you spurn God's greatest gift to man, the one on which the Bible itself depends.

Peace,