Leithart
Sin is an ethical rather than a metaphysical problem – so says van Til, repeatedly. I know what he means: Creation is good; saved human beings are fulfilled human beings, not something other kind of being.
Yet, there are questions.
1) What if we adopt a more relational metaphysics. Does that bring the ethical and metaphysical closer together?
2) The notion (found in Athanasius and many other fathers and medieval theologians) that sin inclines us to non-being seems a classic case of the confusion that van Til identifies. But . . .
What if non-being simply means a defection from true or full humanity? When war and vengeance and hatred fill social and political life, there is a movement toward “non-being” in the sense that more and more human beings are not – since they be dead. When human beings bow down to idols, and come to resemble the senseless pieces of metal (or paper, or pieces of ideology) they worship, that’s a movement toward non-being: Humans are meant to be sentient beings, and idolaters lose their sentience. And so on. ”Non-being” may be a bad way to describe this; but that seems at times to be what these theologians are after. Human beings under the dominion of death and sin, Athanasius says, move toward non-being, that is, they become “brute beasts.” Here, non-being isn’t not-being, non-existence, but a fall from the fullness and abundance of human life under the Lord Jesus.
3) True, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the creation. And yet, creation as it comes from the mouth of God at the beginning is not yet fulfilled. It’s designed to move from glory to glory. When church fathers like Athanasius say that the creation is fragile, balanced on the edge of existence, not stable, they may be in part pointing to the fact that creation has a built in eschatology. Again, speaking of the fragility of beings created from nothing (as if “nothing” were the very, very fragile stuff of which created beings are made – like spider webs, only thinner) may not be the best way to make the point. But the point may still be a valid one, or at least have some valid dimensions.
(The way Athanasius makes the point makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the incarnation would have happened without sin, despite Athanasius’ explicit tying of the incarnation to the fall. If the world is tipping toward corruption in itself, and needs to be brought to stability, then that can only happen if the Word that sustains all creation forges a deeper bond with creation.)
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