NEW STUDIES IN BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 5
Series editor: D. A. Carson
Original sin
ILLUMINATING
THE RIDDLE
Henri Blocher
Apollos
InterVarsity Press
downers grove, illinois 60515
APOLLOS (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press),
38 De Montfort Street, Leicester LEI 7GP, England
Email: ivp@uccf.org.uk
Website: www.ivpbooks.com
INTERVARSITY PRESS
PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, Illinois 60515, USA
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
Email: mail@ivpress.com
© Henri Blocher 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published 1997
Reprinted 2004
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
UK ISBN 0-85111-514-4
USA ISBN 0-8308-2605-X
1. Original sin as taught in Holy Scripture
2. Original sin as Adamic event
The Eden story and palaeo-anthropology
The Eden story and biblical inter-textuality
The Eden story and literary discernment
The Eden story and theological reflection
3. Discerning Paul’s mind on Adam’s role
Looser interpretations of Romans 5
Tighter interpretations of Romans 5
Untying the knot? A new interpretation
4. Original sin as a key to human experience
Shared inheritance and individual decision
5. Original sin as propagated and broken
Index of references to apocryphal and other ancient sources
New Studies in Biblical Theology is a series of monographs that address key issues in the discipline of biblical theology. Contributions to the series focus on one or more of three areas: 1. the nature and status of biblical theology, including its relations with other disciplines (e.g. historical theology, exegesis, systematic theology, historical criticism, narrative theology); 2. the articulation and exposition of the structure of thought of a particular biblical writer or corpus; and 3. the delineation of a biblical theme across all or part of the biblical corpora.
Above all, these monographs are creative attempts to help thinking Christians understand their Bibles better. The series aims simultaneously to instruct and to edify, to interact with the current literature, and to point the way ahead. In God’s universe, mind and heart should not be divorced: in this series we will try not to separate what God has joined together. While the notes interact with the best of the scholarly literature, the text is uncluttered with untransliterated Greek and Hebrew, and tries to avoid too much technical jargon. The ...
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About Original Sin: Illuminating the RiddleWe live in a world shot through with evil. The twentieth century has witnessed suffering and human cruelty on a scale never before imagined. Yet, paradoxically, in recent years the doctrine of original sin has suffered neglect and ridicule. Henri Blocher offers a robust response in this philosophically sophisticated treatment of the biblical evidence for original sin. Interacting with the best theological thinking on the subject, he shows that while the nature of original sin is a mystery—even a riddle—only belief in it makes sense of evil and wrongdoing. After a general survey of the biblical evidence, he moves on to discuss the two key texts. First, he considers the relation of the Eden story of Genesis 2 and 3 to modern scientific, literary, and theological thinking. Then, he offers a new and groundbreaking interpretation of Romans 5, where Paul discusses Christ and Adam. From this exegetical foundation, he goes on to show how the doctrine of original sin makes sense of the paradoxes of human existence. In the final chapter, he discusses the intellectual difficulties that some feel remain with the doctrine itself. |
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