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Hick Chapter 9 - Coggle Diagram
Hick Chapter 9
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Irinaeus: 'soul-making'
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Man's nature is to have freedom and responsibility, and this is the divine image
This freedom/responsibility gives us the potential to be in God's likeness, and we are at the start of a process of growth and development towards this
Man is an immature being not yet worthy of God's gifts, and the fall from Eden was a childish lapse in judgement rather than an adult sin
“man is being taught by his contrasting experience of good and evil to value the one for himself and to shun the other. Hence the mixture of good and evil in our world”
Analogy of mother - “power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was for God himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this perfection yet as an infant.”
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From Augustine to Paul
Paul
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Our sin is inherited and original, not created "ne dovo" by each individual
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Augustine: adam's descendents share the guilt of Adam's sin. The sin of adam is the sin of all men. "Depravito"
In the mid-second century, in the course of the Church’s struggle against Gnosticism, the New Testament canon was formed
Gnosticism: groups in the ancient world who believed that the cosmos was created by an imperfect God, the demiurge
Within this framework, two different developments took place: Augustine+the western church (Catholic), Irinaean+the eastern church (Greek Orthodox). Hick bases his theory upon the latter
Augustine's premises
Evil did not come from God, since God's creation was faultless+perfect
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Differences
Augustine
Man is created perfect, but sins through his free will and strays from God's will
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Irinaeus
Man is created imperfect, but in the 'image' of God. Through moral development he can progress into God's 'likeness
The fall of Adam and Eve is a childish mistake and understandable due to the lack of moral development
Life's difficulties are part of the divinely appointed environment in which man develops towards perfection.
The fall of the angels
All angels were created perfect, some with less grace than others. These fell away from God as they abused their free will, and Adam+Eve repeated this fall. The good angels fight for good, and those who fell don't. Adam and Eve's repetition affected the natural world causing earthquakes, plagues etc.