Christianity is simpler

[atanu]

Yes we are one but Jesus requests our Faith ------.

Who are these we? Only some set of people?

[Znanna]

Yes we are one but Jesus requests our Faith (in baptism) for that one-ness to be fulfilled, totally effective as it were. The one-ness that He prayed to the Father for, was achieved by his death and resurrection. The new Covenant is the worship and service to the Father in Spirit and in Truth.

"Born again in Christ" requires holy waters, yes, but the Christian Church has interpreted form for substance, in my opinion.

("Amrita")

And, the "new Covenant" ... well, honestly I don't even consider that Scriptural.


YMMV


ZN

[atanu]

Nonsense. Spirit is spirit and flesh is flesh. Sin is certainly the reason for imperfection, for the fall of Adam. It doesn't make souls unholy. That is preposterous theology. If we were essentially unholy, then salvation would be pointless if not impossible. We are redeemable by the blood of Perfect Sacrifice by One who was sinless.

As you have later accepted ZNN's citation, how would you separate the so-called sin from God in whom all were once one?

[saidevo]

Nonsense. Spirit is spirit and flesh is flesh. Sin is certainly the reason for imperfection, for the fall of Adam. It doesn't make souls unholy. That is preposterous theology. If we were essentially unholy, then salvation would be pointless if not impossible. We are redeemable by the blood of Perfect Sacrifice by One who was sinless.

It seems to me that the Christian concept of sin is that of karma and that the very word sin is synonymous with the word karma. Christianity distinguishes between the original sin and other actual (personal) sins. The original sin resulted in the birth of humanity with a weakness in human nature that invites death.

A child gets its body from its parents and the soul from God. But the child, because it is bound to die, inherits the original sin. Since the child is only a soul before it gets a body, the original sin in the form of karma attaches to the soul.

Actual or personal sins result by doing evil (sin of commission) or refraining from doing good (sin of omission). In Roman Catholic theology an actual sin is specifically any willful thought, desire, word, action or omission forbidden by the law of God. Is that not act of creating karma?

The remission of the original sin comes from baptism. The remission of actual or personal sins is obtained by sincere repententence, faith in Jesus and prayer for his grace.

If sins are viewed as accretion of bad karma, then any sin attaches to the soul, which in Christianity rots in Eternal Hell, and not to the body, which perishes.

(For once let me not talk about the inadequacy of this religious philosophy here. )

[saidevo]

This is how Sri Yukteswar expounds the story of Adam and Eve and the original sin in the book Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 16:

“The Adam and Eve story is incomprehensible to me!” I observed with considerable heat one day in my early struggles with the allegory. “Why did God punish not only the guilty pair, but also the innocent unborn generations?”

Master was more amused by my vehemence than my ignorance. “GENESIS is deeply symbolic, and cannot be grasped by a literal interpretation,” he explained. “Its 'tree of life' is the human body. The spinal cord is like an upturned tree, with man's hair as its roots, and afferent and efferent nerves as branches. The tree of the nervous system bears many enjoyable fruits, or sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In these, man may rightfully indulge; but he was forbidden the experience of sex, the 'apple' at the center of the bodily garden. {FN16-14}

“The 'serpent' represents the coiled-up spinal energy which stimulates the sex nerves. 'Adam' is reason, and 'Eve' is feeling. When the emotion or Eve-consciousness in any human being is overpowered by the sex impulse, his reason or Adam also succumbs. {FN16-15}

“God created the human species by materializing the bodies of man and woman through the force of His will; He endowed the new species with the power to create children in a similar 'immaculate' or divine manner. {FN16-16} Because His manifestation in the individualized soul had hitherto been limited to animals, instinct-bound and lacking the potentialities of full reason, God made the first human bodies, symbolically called Adam and Eve. To these, for advantageous upward evolution, He transferred the souls or divine essence of two animals. {FN16-17} In Adam or man, reason predominated; in Eve or woman, feeling was ascendant. Thus was expressed the duality or polarity which underlies the phenomenal worlds. Reason and feeling remain in a heaven of cooperative joy so long as the human mind is not tricked by the serpentine energy of animal propensities.

“The human body was therefore not solely a result of evolution from beasts, but was produced by an act of special creation by God. The animal forms were too crude to express full divinity; the human being was uniquely given a tremendous mental capacity-the 'thousand-petaled lotus' of the brain-as well as acutely awakened occult centers in the spine.

“God, or the Divine Consciousness present within the first created pair, counseled them to enjoy all human sensibilities, but not to put their concentration on touch sensations. {FN16-18} These were banned in order to avoid the development of the sex organs, which would enmesh humanity in the inferior animal method of propagation. The warning not to revive subconsciously-present bestial memories was not heeded. Resuming the way of brute procreation, Adam and Eve fell from the state of heavenly joy natural to the original perfect man.

“Knowledge of 'good and evil' refers to the cosmic dualistic compulsion. Falling under the sway of MAYA through misuse of his feeling and reason, or Eve-and Adam-consciousness, man relinquishes his right to enter the heavenly garden of divine self-sufficiency. {FN16-19} The personal responsibility of every human being is to restore his 'parents' or dual nature to a unified harmony or Eden.”

As Sri Yukteswar ended his discourse, I glanced with new respect at the pages of GENESIS.

“Dear Master,” I said, “for the first time I feel a proper filial obligation toward Adam and Eve!”

[atanu]

This is how Sri Yukteswar expounds the story of Adam and Eve and the original sin in the book Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 16:

Still the question of separating so-called sin from God would be impossible. His creation of Adam and Eve could be faulted.

This story is told in Vedas and Puranas in slightly different manner. Prajapati himself desires his daughter Usha and He punishes himself for the impropreity.

Sarabhanaga Ji has very nicely presented this eternal conflict (apparent loss of perfection) in one of the Shaiva posts.

Why put the blame on Adam and Eve? They are just shadows.

[satay]

This is how Sri Yukteswar expounds the story of Adam and Eve and the original sin in the book Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 16:

namaste saidevo,
It is the greatness of hindu sages that they can explain a nonsense looking story such beautifully, however, I don't understand why our sages do it.

Why not ask the christians to explain to us the stories of their scritpures as they understand it?

[satay]

The original sin resulted in the birth of humanity with a weakness in human nature that invites death.

Could you please explain in detail? How was the 'original sin' possible to begin with?!

Don't answer: free will
well, you can if you would like but then I will come back with more questions.

A child gets its body from its parents and the soul from God. But the child, because it is bound to die, inherits the original sin. Since the child is only a soul before it gets a body, the original sin in the form of karma attaches to the soul.

This doesn't make any sense to me. What's the relation between 'death' and 'inheritance' of original sin? If soul is from God and it never existed before according to christianity then where and why does it inherit original sin? If the original father is God who is without sin...how and from where the soul that he creates inherits sin? I fail to understand...

[satay]

Nonsense. Spirit is spirit and flesh is flesh. Sin is certainly the reason for imperfection, for the fall of Adam. It doesn't make souls unholy. That is preposterous theology.

Yes, nonsense. I agree with you. Perhaps you and jaggin are from different schools of thought in christianity? Where he believes that souls are unholy you don't seem to agree with him. Perfectly okay by me.

If we were essentially unholy, then salvation would be pointless if not impossible. We are redeemable by the blood of Perfect Sacrifice by One who was sinless.

Well, see this sort of contradiction doesn't make any sense to me.

Allow me to explain, if we are not unholy as you said then that implies that we are 'holy'. In that case then there is no such thing as 'salvation' and there is no need of anyone's blood or sacrifice, especially the one you call 'sinless'. If we are not unholy and thus holy therefore, we must all be 'sinless' so therefore, there is no need for redemption from one who was sinless.

Anyhow, let's keep this simple eh?

[saidevo]

Namaste Satay,

Could you please explain in detail? How was the 'original sin' possible to begin with?!

Don't answer: free will
well, you can if you would like but then I will come back with more questions.

This doesn't make any sense to me. What's the relation between 'death' and 'inheritance' of original sin? If soul is from God and it never existed before according to christianity then where and why does it inherit original sin? If the original father is God who is without sin...how and from where the soul that he creates inherits sin? I fail to understand...

I should have perhaps added the [Quote] marks to the contents of my post. They are almost verbatim reproductions of the Christian perspective detailed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin. Only the word karma is my addition to the concepts.

My thinking was like this: a soul if it needs to take a human body, then it means that it needs to have a karma attached to it, or else there will be no birth (Hinduism). So I thought that the Christian concept of sin should be that of karma, because the seven deadly sins and other types they elaborate are the result of human desires, which generate both good and bad karma. Hinduism convincingly explains it as a cycle of reincarnation, but if you trace the origin of a soul, when it took a first body eons ago (and this could have been the body in the mineral or vegetable kingdom), can we attribute a cause for that birth? Brahma created his mind-born and other sons directly and they were born with no karma tag with the sole purpose of procreation for the other souls to take birth. But what about an ordinary soul? In Hinduism its origin is indeterminate, is it not? Our puranas that talk of creation mainly deal with the present Brahma, saying that there were other Brahmas before him, other cycles of shristi and pralaya.

What about Christianity? The Bible says that the world was created in six days and that it is only 6,000 years old! So God needed a cause for the birth of the first set of humans and this perhaps gave them the need for the original sin, which is actually a desire to eat the Fruit of Knowledge and see if they would be doomed--a human curiosity under temptation. Christianity is divided on the actual meaning of the original sin and what I have quoted in my post are only some of the explanations.

The whole point of my post is that if sin is karma, will it attach to the body or soul?