Nigel Tomes - LSM's Unorthodox Satanology

[Arizona]

Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner

Here's where I think the argument stands at this point.

KSA believes man was corrupted at the fall but nothing got "into" him. He just got corrupted by his choice to disobey God. From that point man's entire being -- body, soul, and spirit -- were deadened. Satan can enter man as he did with Judas, but this very fact proves he is not already in him.

SC believes something foreign did get into man in the Garden. That foreign element is related to Satan but certainly not him in the whole. SC is beginning to believe what got in was DOUBT. SC is also beginning to rethink his entire belief that each child is born a sinner. He is starting to think that each child, though conceived by and in sinful parents, gets a fresh shot in his own personal Garden ... which he blows. Always. Why? Because each child has a free will and an open ear and Satan gets busy whispering doubt into the child from day one. (He does this through surrogates including the doubting parents.)

Abraham is the hero of the OT because Abraham stopped doubting and returned to a life of belief.

Hey, I'm thinking aloud here so back off! I know someone is going to hammer me with verses proving that each child is indeed dripping with as much sin as afterbirth in the delivery room floor.

At any rate, the thing that interests me here is that maybe it was DOUBT, the anti-faith, that came in. Maybe this is Satan's "nature."

Somebody stop me here before I really get going.


SC

SC,

You made me want to rise up in the stands and cheer "Go Speaker Go!!", "Go Speaker Go!!"............

Some thoughts. Dont let me distract if these start a wrong direction.

I think there is something to this idea that the sinful nature is in fact that of unbelief, or at least a component. Defining sin as a misaiming, the Good News of God is that "faith" is the one thing we need in order to be redirected. I think maybe we miss sometimes the vital importance of faith as the "central lane of God's economy" .

Some teachers, ie Campbell Morgan, have taught that man was created a spiritual being, and that the fall was "spiritually literal" (those are my words). Man therefore "fell" to a lower realm where he lost the former consciousness of God's presence. Faith is called the substantiation of things unseen in the NT, so through faith God's presence is again consciously realized and man is restored to fellowship with the Divine.

I suppose we might say that man fell from a spiritual state to a "material" state of existence and was then in a realm of senses (sight, smell, etc) and so lost his ability to "see" the invisible or spiritual. Man was barred not just from the Tree of Life but from the Garden itself, not by a vindictive God but rather due to his own condition which came about through the doubt injected into man through the guile of the serpent.

Just my thought.

Much grace.

Arizona

[SpeakersCorner]

Originally Posted by Arizona

Some teachers, ie Campbell Morgan, have taught that man was created a spiritual being, and that the fall was "spiritually literal" (those are my words). Man therefore "fell" to a lower realm where he lost the former consciousness of God's presence. Faith is called the substantiation of things unseen in the NT, so through faith God's presence is again consciously realized and man is restored to fellowship with the Divine.

Arizona,

I like this thought, especially that we recover our ability to see spiritual things. I think it was Panton who said Adam and Eve were probably glowing from within (their spirits) and that was the clothing they wore before they fell. When they ate the fruit, the spirit was deadened, the light went out, and they could see their own nakedness.

This would match what Campbell says ... a fall from a spiritual plane to a mere physical one. The restoration of the spiritual plane is one of the key motifs of the Bible. In the end, even opague things like gold and jasper become transparent. All is transparent since we can see anew.


SC