What did Adam know / figure out?

(Theological brain teaser time

Maybe seems like an odd question?

Yet considering Scripture passages like "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." And Abraham says to Issac "God will provide Himself a sacrifice." Indicate some inkling of knowledge of a redemption plan.

Also that the invisible things of God are seen in the creation.

As well as Scripture telling us those predestine unto redemption are predestine from the foundations of the world.

AND Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundations of the world.

Have you ever wondered what God told Adam before the fall?

Obviously Adam had the warning "The day that you eat of this tree you shall surely die." Yet did he know; had he figured out; or was he told; that there was also a redemption plan? Obviously too, Adam had received this news in the parabolic symbol of the Tree of Life. And was the "be fruitful and multiply" command (which only becomes necessary in the face of death) a foreshadowing of what was to come?

Now consequently we know that the first few words out of Adam's mouth post fall, were to blame God for it, by giving him Eve. So I'm not inclined to say that Adam's reason to disobey was of some "conviction" to bring about a greater good. Sin's motive is never a noble one. LOL.

Had Adam figured out that there was a redemption plan prior to the fall though?
He was certainly intelligent enough to have figured it out.

And putting all these puzzle pieces together; could Adam have "predicted" his own fall?

Passages, pondering, opinions (and even a good joke) accepted.

And just for the sake of raising more questions; is there any indication that Adam's visitations from God were ever in the form of theophanies?

joshua 1 9 said:

Adam did not want to be separated from Eve. So he sacrificed himself for her. In the same way Jesus did not want to be separated from His Bride.

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I've heard this argument before.

If that was truly the case; why didn't Adam intercede to God on Eve's behalf as opposed to blaming God for giving him Eve?

Jesus atoned for sin; but not by committing it in the process.

Carl Emerson said:

How could Adam know what death was?

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Good question; yet he was told that if he ate the fruit he would surly die!

joshua 1 9 said:

Sounds like you do not understand what an archetype is.

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I understand what an archetype is; it's just Adam miserably failed the test and demonstrated the prime example of what not to do.

Adam and Eve truly did embody the frailty of what it means to be mortal. The two of them together made up "created in the image of God" and I would agree with you that on some level, Adam viewed Eve as a part of himself. So yes, one could not transgress without it drastically affecting the other.

Note they were not expelled from the garden until he ate the fruit. So thus, Adam (at least in this sense) was not a good example of an archetype of Christ. He bore the responsibly, but failed the test. This is the fundamental difference of demonstrating how and why Jesus passed when Adam failed.

Now hypothetically, Adam could have dragged Eve before God and said: "Houston we have a problem here. She ate the fruit and I know if I eat it too; there will be dire consequences. You said that if we ate the fruit we would die. I believe You! She's going to die; what am I suppose to do?"

God's response would have been: "You were commanded to keep the garden. How did you let this serpent get in there?" And so Adam would have to account for that transgression. Adam and Eve were still capable of doing things that displeased God; they just weren't aware of it until having been given commands.

Now if Adam had said: "You're right God, I really screwed up. What do I do now?" The next question God would have posed to Adam would have been. "Are you willing to sacrifice your own life to save hers?" Of which Adam's answer would have been "No, this is all Your fault God!". (Which is essentially what Adam did.)

I don't think eating the fruit is what produced Adam's hardness of heart; it only gave him awareness of that hardness. Thus demonstrating that Adam did not bear the capacity of love that Christ did. Was this reality a reminder to Adam that he was not God? Was Adam's motivation that he really wanted to supplant God? This is another aspect the original question this thread raises of "What did Adam really know prior to the fall?"

Now, "theologically" because Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and obviously didn't bear the eternal aspects of what God is, made the fall inevitable. Scripture says Eve was deceived but Adam wasn't. She ate the fruit under the false pretense that it would make her wise. It gave her knowledge, but did not give her wisdom. The desire to be wise like God isn't a bad thing in and of itself; but she went about trying to obtain that wisdom the wrong way. Scripture says that if any one seeks wisdom, let him seek it of God. Eve obviously bore the intellectual capacity to have known that.

So in this sense, eating the fruit bore witness to Adam and Eve that their hearts weren't in the right place to begin with. Evil existed in their world. They just weren't aware of the magnitude of its consequences until they ate the fruit. The tree was "the knowledge of good and evil"; it wasn't the "tree of good and evil".

Now having been told this was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; would have at the very least, given them word of God that evil existed. Which raises the question, did Adam ask God: "Well, what actually is evil?" or "What actually is death?" There was nothing lacking in them to have asked God those questions. And it seems logical to me that at least Adam would have asked; because Scripture does say Adam was not deceived.

Which brings us back to the OP. We tend to make all kinds of excuses for ourselves (and Adam included); but what did Adam really know?

joshua 1 9 said:

So are you saying that Jesus should have interceded to God on our behalf instead of going to calvery and making the supreme sacrifice for us?

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As far as this aspect goes. Obviously Jesus did / does make intercession.

The need to contend with the consequences of disobedience is what drove the need for atonement. That's (kind of) a different subject though.

Kaon said:

He should have let Eve be wrong, and let the Most High God make another woman for him.

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God would not have made Adam a new wife though. Adam was left to contend with the mess he'd created. He did not protect her by protecting the garden (which they were both told to do). And so, something was amiss before the fall actually happened.

Kaon said:

Edit: but that is clearly easier said than done since I am not Adam.

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You're not Adam in the sense that you don't have the perspective of existing without the knowledge of good and evil, because you live in a fallen world. If having been put in Adam's shoes though; you would have made the same choice because that by nature is the consequence of what it means to be mortal.

Kaon said:

That may have been part of the knowledge of good and evil the serpent entity alluded to that was attractive - precisely because he didn't know what death was.

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Experientially Adam had not intimate knowledge of death. That is true. The question now becomes did he (they) trust God enough to obey? The answer to that obviously is "no"; and we know this because we live those consequences.

Kaon said:

I think Adam should have chosen not to sin because his wife sinned; he should have chosen the Most High God over his wife - and I say that with tremendous hindsight and displacement.

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Technically that is the morally correct answer. Which was the dilemma Jesus faced. Being God incarnate in created form gave the Creator the ability to create a race of people for Himself outside of the need to provide atonement.

Jesus makes reference to this when He talks about His own choice to be a eunuch. He states that: "Some are made eunuchs by nature, some by men, but one has made himself a eunuch in order to reign in the kingdom of God."

Now if Jesus had created a race of people in the flesh, there would be no "reigning over" a race of Divine beings who would have been exactly the same as their father. Talk about Trinity to infinity; because the potential for Jesus to just keep propagating offspring was infinite because none of His posterity would have bore the capacity to sin. But what would have been the point in that? Simply to demonstrate that God is capable of obeying His own laws? Thus would ultimately have been a pointless demonstration, because it would have failed to show forth God's primary character trait as being love.

No greater love has a man than he lay down his life for a friend. (And how much greater demonstration of love than to lay down One's life for a race of people who hate You on top of it! That's a bit mind boggling.)

Jesus's offspring, (unlike Adam's) would have bore the capacity to create for themselves their own wives and children; thus creating the need to create a continuously expanding infinite universe. Again, practically speaking; what would be the point? That would not be the greatest demonstration of love.

Not to say this was not a temptation to Jesus. The end of that eunuch verse states in the Greek "But by the power of God who restrains him, let him continue in the command." The "command" he was to continue in; hearkened back to Genesis "be fruitful and multiply". Jesus the human was left to do this only in the spiritual realm through atonement, which is why he needed to be restrained from doing so in the flesh. Why this need in the flesh? Well, what do You get when You incarnate the Creator in created form; besides a human with a strong innate desire to create life; on account of the nature of being the Creator!

So for anyone who's ever wondered about Jesus's personal drive for want of sex; the answer to that question is: yes.

Kaon said:

The difference between Adam 1 and Adam 2/The Redeemer is that the Redeemer was always the Lamb chosen for sacrifice; He chose this, and He didn't have to disobey His Father.

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And this is one interesting aspect of God being incarnate because on one level (on account of the nature of what He/he was); "He" couldn't disobey. Now "he" could disobey; which would have meant instantaneous death to "him" because "He" can't inhabit the same space as sinful "him".

Psalm 139 states that Jesus understood that He/he was uniquely made and in much truer sense than Adam; bore a free will, because "He" still maintained being omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immortal and eternal, even though "he" was none of those. "he" was still "the image of God" but being joined to "Him" put to death sin in the flesh.

Pretty wild huh!

Job3315 said:

This is interesting. What I don't understand is, why God didn't continue human kind with others since I don't think Adam and Eve were the only ones, the first ones, yes, but not the only ones on earth.

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Adam and Eve and what ever posterity they produced were the only humans in the universe; or at least the only "humans" in the universe of "their own kind".

Is there extraterrestrial carbon based life that bears comparable sentience outside of the race we understand as humans? That is possible because we know there are created sentient entities called "angels".

Have extraterrestrials been to earth? Hypothetically possible; yet carbon based life is not designed to overcome the laws of physics that would make light speed space travel impossible. Are there worm hole type "short cuts" through space; or entities that have far longer lifespans that they could take the time to travel great distances "conventionally" through space? If they exist; I am not privy to that information. Scripture does speak of the "worlds" (plural) God has created and the "world" (singular) He has redeemed; which makes (carbon based or not) extraterrestrial life theoretically (as well as theologically) possible.

God made everything after its own kind though and the Scripture tells us that angels don't marry, nor are they given in marriage; which by implication means they don't reproduce. And thus by default would not be capable of doing so.

Carbon based life is so specific to "it's own kind" that we can't even cross carbon based life that's not "of its own kind"; none to say crossing a spirit entity with a flesh one.

Job3315 said:

There were even children of God at some point dwelling with men.

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Now who; or what actually were these "children of God"? Based on God creating everything after it's own kind; I would conclude they were humans.

Could carbon based extraterrestrial life be genetically compatible to earth based life? In any capacity excepting those created in God's image; I think that's possible. As humans tasked with the responsibility of ruling over the earth; who is given the authority to reign becomes another question.

Could carbon based sentient life also be created in a differing aspect of the image of God? Again theoretically possible; but that raises all sorts of other questions concerning the affects of the fall on the rest of the universe, as well as the question of the need for atonement in juxtaposed to the need to simply be delivered from death. If others created in God's image are also subject to their own version of the fall; that would require their own need to be atoned for; in which if not "made after the kind" of man; would require also an incarnation. And this is where it gets "theologically messy".

joshua 1 9 said:

God made them male and female, man and women, masculine and feminine. Then he wanted them to be joined together and become one. Jesus is the Groom and we are the bride. So marriage is an example of the intimate relationship that Creator wants to have with His Creation.

"He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them "Mankind" when they were created." (Genesis 5:2) It looks like male and female together is "Mankind".

Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

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And this is why Adam likely viewed Eve as "part of himself" (as well as the fact that she was literally taken from his body). He calls her "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh".

Yes, God wanted Adam and Eve to be joined together and in a certain sense; how could two have been more closely "joined together" than one having been created from the body of the other. This would have meant that Eve was literally Adam's genetic clone; although clearly she had a mind, soul and conscience of her own.

Translate this now to the incarnation. Christ was born of the "seed of the woman". God became inseparably connected to His creation, in that just as Eve was technically a genetic clone of Adam; Jesus's flesh would have essentially been a male genetic clone of Mary. This is how Jesus was also "fully man".

I agree, male and female together constitute what is considered "mankind created in God's image". The need to create counterparts capable of reproducing to compensate for the fact that God knew death would enter into the created realm. This is why "mankind" from the onset constituted two individuals. Because they would die; they needed to be able to create more life.

joshua 1 9 said:

Eve would have been his sister. Men get all of the female chromosomes from their mother.

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Genetically speaking, that would not have been the case, because Adam and Eve weren't born of human parents.

Unless they are identical twins (who are always the same gender); siblings born to the same parents are not genetically identical.

Kaon said:

Why not? Eve was made from the genetics of Adam; the Most High God is not limited to making one woman for Adam from his bones.

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Why not; is because that would not have served God's eternal purposes to show forth His essence being rooted in love.

Legally all should be condemned to destruction for one single sin. Would you wish yourself to be shut out of the possibility of redemption; because in essence that's what creating another wife for Adam would have done.

Additionally too; are you a polygamist? Because that's the other "social" outcome of such an idea.

Kaon said:

Even sinned first, and notice nothing happened in the narrative until Adam "ate" from the "tree". Adam was given the directive not to entertain the tree; he did it anyway. Adam did not have to sin, and Eve would have been the only one who fell.

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So.... another Eve is created, and another one, and another one..... Why?

Kaon said:

Perhaps. But that still doesn't change the fact that Adam chose to disobey the Most High God.

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So do you believe if you were Adam you would not have transgressed?

The fact that you are a sinner proves that idea to be wrong. (Unless of course you don't believe you are a sinner; and if that's the case, then you are deceived.)

Kaon said:

He still disobeyed the Most High God. And, we don't know the depth of Adam's knowledge.

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True that we don't know the depth of Adam's knowledge but we do know it was deep enough deem him accountable.