Denney: the unity of sin and death

Friday, May 28, 2010
    Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089
Meditation:
    Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
    —Romans 5:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    What so spoke to [Paul] from the third chapter of Genesis was not a ... story of how death invaded Paradise, but the profound experience of the human race expressed in the story, an experience in which sin and death interpenetrate, and in a sense constitute each other. To us, they are what they are only in relation to each other, and when we deny the relation we see the reality of neither. This is the truth, as I apprehend it, of all we are taught, either in the Old Testament or the New, about the relation of sin and death. It is part of the greater truth that what we call the physical and spiritual worlds are ultimately one, being constituted with a view to each other; and most of the objections which are raised against it are special cases of the objections which are raised against the recognition of this ultimate unity.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 68 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You reign over all, in mercy and grace. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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