Wow, I thank you for your detailed thoughts!
You've certainly touched on many ideas relating to the question. It seems as though it stops short of getting at the heart of my question (or my reading of it stops short of understanding your response).
Let me try to ask in another way:
Yes or No: Will our future glorified state be a restoration of the pre-fall state of Adam?
I'm sure many would say yes, but I say no. For one thing, prior to the fall there was the potential for the fall. Are we to believe there will be an eternal potential for future falls after our redemption is complete? The answer would seem to be a clear 'NO'.
So, the original creation must not have been God's ideal intended creation. In short, He foresaw (and I would say fore-ordained) the fall and the initial creation was intended as the starting place for the plan of redemption.
Another example is the question of Adam's pre-fall mortality. Was Adam immortal before the fall? To say no would seem to deny the Biblical doctrine that death came through the fall. To say yes means that immortality isn't really immortality <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Sproul said it this way (and he was only reiterating what previous theologians said): that if Adam hadn't sinned he'd be a very old mortal. Mortal, meaning he had the potential to die, but wouldn't have died due to God's sustaining perhaps.
However, Scripture promises us a future immortality, not just a long-lived mortality without the potential death occurring.
I may have just rambled quite a bit, but I'm wondering if theologians from time past have been asking these questions and if so were there any convenient labels applied to the differing schools of thought.
