I would say that at that point [before and during the temptation] the Spirit of God indwelt both Adam/Eve so some sort of physical presence would have been unnecessary.
Good point, but the above as a response still evades my question. Rephrasing the question (see my post # 59 above), was it impossible for God by nature or purpose to have done more to restrain Adam/Eve from eating of the tree from which He had commanded Adam not to eat? Some sort of divine physical presence may be unnecessary for such restraint on Adam/Eve in their temptation, but that "unnecessary-ness" does not address the aim of my question.
Yes, God was influencing Adam and Eve during the temptation. (God created them and the garden, how could He not have been influencing them?) But was it impossible for God to have exerted greater influence against yielding to temptation during the temptation? Physical presence is merely a device suggested by God walking in the garden in the cool of the day as the actual narrative relates to the reader.
Well, they are isolated cases of Scripture, yes. We will never know other possibilities unless we're specifically told, and we're not. So all we can do is speculate.
Aside from the possibility that we are not yet thinking of or addressing other inferences from Scripture, I agree that the "Abimelech and Sodom" examples in some sense "are isolated cases" of what we are "specifically told" in Scripture.
But the above so far as I can tell still evades my (another) question ("do [the Abimelech and Sodom illustrations] not show what God can do"), perhaps on grounds as you also wrote above that "it's possible that God has to allow Adam/Eve to be tempted for some reason; i.e., he has to allow the other side (Satan) to present their [his?] case."
If that "God has to allow" claim is true, then God cannot create/is incapable of creating a universe (or rather could not have created an alternate history to our world) in which Adam (meaning Adam and Eve) was
not tempted to sin (presumably in the manner in which Genesis represents the events), leading us back to your post # 56 claim that "we don't know if there is a possible world where they would not have eaten of the tree."
But I'm not sure the "God has to allow" claim is true or if it is true, I'm not sure it is not patient of more than one meaning, depending on the proposed purpose of the constraint on God or on something proposed as in God's nature. Are you claiming that God has to allow Adam to be tempted by the serpent for the purpose of establishing Adam as an independent moral agent (although I'm not sure I fully understand what that means) or casting the net further afield that God is incapable in Himself of creating a sentient being without obedience testing or that it is impossible for God to have created Adam without planning to glorify Himself through Adam's disobedience or something else?
Granted your language is tentative and infused with the somewhat experimental. You may not (yet?) have a clear answer in every respect.
Then at some risk(?) of stagnation by revisiting illustrations, if God did influence Abimelech sufficient to prevent his sinning, why was God incapable of influencing Adam sufficient to prevent his eating (hence sinning)? If God was capable of influencing Sodom (and Tyre and Sidon) to repent of sin, which would have been a great thing, why was God incapable of influencing Adam not to start sinning, a lesser thing? Is God incapable of doing in one circumstance what He did in another? And if so (not that I think it so here), on what grounds? Why is it mere speculation to claim that God could do (not necessarily what He would do) what we know He has done?
Or if God was indeed constrained "to allow Adam/Eve to be tempted [by the serpent]," was He constrained by anything outside Himself, His own nature and purposes (referencing a number of my above posts/Scripture citations, e.g., that God "works all things according to the counsel of his will," Eph. 1:11)? Again, what do you mean here by the possibility that "God has to allow"? Or more importantly, how do the Scriptures (reference for example Scripture citations of my earlier posts) handle the issue?
Granted such an end may eventually bring us full circle at points, but along the way perhaps I have clarified something of how your responding post # 61 seems partly to evade or misunderstand the previous questions in my post # 59 and how in some ways how I am uncertain what you mean or could mean; this may be useful to you. Whether anything here brings us closer to addressing your OP issue or not may depend partly on what we believe the (somehow theologically harmonized) Scriptures say.
