| | Sez Athanasius:
"For this cause, then, death having gained upon men, and corruption abiding upon them, the race of man was perishing; the rational man made in God's image was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution....So, as the rational creatures were wasting and such works in course of ruin, what was God in His goodness to do? Suffer corruption to prevail against them and death to hold them fast? And where were the profit of their having been made, to begin with? For better were they not made, than once made, left to neglect and ruin. For neglect reveals weakness, and not goodness on God's part--if, that is, He allows His own work to be ruined when once He had made it--more so than if He had never made man at all."
It were unseemly for God to tolerate corruption in His image, man, because the condition of man reflects on God. It is interesting, however, that such a long time elapsed between the beginning of corruption, in Adam, and the beginning of its restoration, in Christ. 4,000 years is a long time for God to tolerate something that reflects badly on Him. Why didn't Christ come within nanoseconds of the fall?
Well, I don't have the whole answer, but the question itself shows something about God's nature. It's easy to think of God's righteousness as working like a computer system, where everything must be conform rigidly in order for it to hum along. Introduce a single bug or glitch, and crash, down comes the whole system and cannot function until the glitch is fixed. Instead, God is a living person, and His constitution can handle 4,000 years of slander while He prepares the fix. |
| | Posted 2/26/2009 5:14 PM - 50 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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