Adam & Eve's sin

MoreQuestions said:

He could have made them complete and perfect, then given them free will after that. That way they would have made perfect choices and no-one would have had to worry about sin. Can you see any downside if he'd used that approach?

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The infinite magnitude of the glory of his goodness, love and mercy would never have been known.

MoreQuestions said:

I think you might have got the lying thing the wrong way round.
The serpent said they would not die. They didn't, so the serpent told the truth.
God said they would die and they didn't, so God lied.

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"Dying, you will die." (Ge 2:17)

They died spiritually (lost eternal life) and their bodies began decaying into death, which eventually overtook them.
Now we are all born without eternal life, condemned (Ro 5:18), and receive that eternal life only through faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Jn 3:18, 36).

Ezekiel 48, gives us a picture of heavenly Jerusalam. James ( the half-brother of our Lord Christ Jesus) will enter through the north side, where there are 3 gates, 3 pearls, 3 angels, etc, etc....

Paul, a Benjamin will enter through the east wall......

Tradition states that on the east side, the mount of Olives is situated.....Oh what a day blessed Christian believer.

Zion comes down from heaven, not created on earth by man.....Amen and endless Hallelujah's forever and ever and ever

JackRT said:

God didn't create Satan, man did.

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God created the angels, some angels chose to rebel under a leader, they are now demons, under the leadership of Satan.

Man didn't create "Satan," the Biblical record did--referred to over 50 times in Scripture, 2/3 of them in the NT alone.

Satan (ha'shaitan) occurs by name in the Old Testament in the parable we call the Book of Job, and here it's clear that the angel Satan is not the Devil! The Devil is supposedly banished from the presence of God, yet in Job, Satan is allowed to talk with and to come and go from God's presence and on a mission for God yet! What's going on?
Satan here is not "the Devil"

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The NT disagrees. . .for starters, the tempter of Jesus in the wilderness is called
both Satan (Mt 4:10) and the devil (Mt 4:1, 5, 8, 11).

"Devil" is in Scripture over 100 times, over 95% of them in the NT.

but sort of God's prosecuting attorney, an unwelcome character but not an evil one. There is a very common perception that the 'Lucifer' in Isaiah 14:12ff refers to Satan, the supernatural personification of evil. This misconception comes from two sources. The first is wishful thinking in the sense that it is nice to think that 'the Enemy' will get his come-uppance eventually. The second has to do with the old caution that scripture is to be read only 'in context'. This requires going back and reading all of Isaiah 13 and the earlier verses in Isaiah 14. When this is done we suddenly realize that scripture is not speaking of a supernatural Satan at all but of a Babylonian king with an immense ego. Read Isaiah 14: " 4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:" What follows is a long rant against this oppressive king filled with numerous reference to his human nature like Isaiah 14: "16 Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, 17 the man who made the world a desert, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?" This passage is in no way a reference to Satan or the devil. The Jews did not originally believe in devils but they picked up this concept during the Babylonian Exile from the Persians who followed Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians believed in both a god of good (Ahura-Mazda) and a god of evil (Ahrulman) engaged in a cosmic struggle. The Jews picked up and ran with this idea. It was easy to cast YHWH in the role of the God of good. They took also the angel ha'shaitan (Satan) in the book of Job and recast that character as Satan the near divine force of evil. Up to that time, their concept of God was of a being responsible for everything, both good and evil. Isaiah 45:”7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” is just one quote that demonstrates this.

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The Jews never connected Satan to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It was the second-century Christian martyr, Justin of Samaria, who was first to argue that Satan appeared as a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve to disobey God.

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None of which alters the testimony of the NT Word of God written that Satan is the devil for whom, with his angels, eternal fire was prepared (Mt 25:41).

OldWiseGuy said:

The creation of Eve mirrors the creation of Lucifer. God was rehearsing the creation of Lucifer in Eve

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"Lucifer", if you think it is Satan, existed before Eve.

in that Lucifer was made of the very substance of God himself, to be his spirit 'loved one'. Lucifer was a 'wife-type' to God, without actually having a 'female' gender. Lucifer was the ante-type of the Proverbs 31 woman, being given great authority and resources to provide and care for God's family of angels, while her husband/God was 'in the gate'/on his throne.

Eve likewise was made from the very substance of Adam...his rib, to be his helper and consort/wife. As God created Lucifer a 'suitable' companion for himself, he also created Eve as a suitable companion for Adam, realizing that it was not good for either of them to be alone. So as Adam gave up part of himself for the creation of Eve God also gave part of himself in the creation of Lucifer.

Lucifer, like the Proverbs 31 wife, was given great authority, over one-third of the spirit family of God. Lucifer had a throne, whether physical or not, upon the earth, and became enamored with the idea of elevating that position over all the other angels. It grew into a conspiracy involving all of the angels in his charge. With strength of numbers he ascended to the throne room of God and sought equal authority. What Lucifer attempted to claim was deemed by God to be "rebellion" against his authority, and thus the concept of "sin" came into being.

Eve did much the same thing, taking authority to herself, however innocent and however deceived, in regard to God's authority.

The results were the same. Lucifer was cast out of heaven, Eve and Adam were cast out of paradise. Both events led to ruin, of God's heavenly kingdom, and of the repeated ruin of the kingdoms of the earth, to culminate in total destruction, save for the eleventh hour intervention 'for the elects sake'.

Happily both kingdoms will be restored. The earth under the millennial rule of Christ; the Kingdom of Heaven in the 'new heavens and new earth'.

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MoreQuestions said:

Didn't God force Eve on Adam?

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... uh, no. Not really.

MoreQuestions said:

Should have made them complete. That would have simplified a few things.

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Did they have belly buttons?

hh92 said:

How is it that Adam & Eve are said to have been created perfect, yet they were led to temptation by the serpent? Surely they must have had some inherent impurity for this to have happened?

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I of course know this story from the Quran and the Bible very well. However, idea of innate fault with people has no grounds according to my Shamanist faith. We see as if your life is a test, to fulfill a purpose why you were born on this earth. Like strong or weak, very moral or less so, everyone has a value. You are no less or no lower if your soul’s level of spiritual growth is not as advanced. Everyone has a chance of growing into a better version of themselves. To say you are bad because you were born that way and need an outside agent to rid you of this deficient quality is like saying to a child you can’t walk, but crawl all your life, so trust your daddy carry you on his back your whole life. Baby has legs which can walk in time, if you have faults you can grow above them.

hh92 said:

How is it that Adam & Eve are said to have been created perfect, yet they were led to temptation by the serpent? Surely they must have had some inherent impurity for this to have happened?

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No, just the freedom to choose, which necessarily entails that they could choose against God's will. God did not want prisoners, or puppets, unable to act contrary to His will, but creatures that could truly choose to love Him. And so, He placed in the Garden a real choice between obedience and disobedience that Adam and Eve could make.

hh92 said:

To me it's kinda like having a child and then saying to it "I have created you, now be obedient to me and worship me otherwise you will be punished for eternity."

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It doesn't work to analogize, except only superficially, from the human parent-child relationship to the God-creature one. God is in an entirely different category from you or I. Drawing too-great parallels, parallels that ignore the category difference, from ourselves, our human relationships, to Him and our relationship to Him can, then, produce very mistaken notions about the nature of our relationship to Him.

No human parent has created a child in the sense in which God has created you and I and no human parent sustains their child's existence in the way that God sustains your existence and mine at every moment. God's relationship to His creatures extends far, far beyond the boundaries of any human relationship, entailing the exercise of divine prerogatives no human possesses.

God, then, as our Creator and Sustainer, has the right to demand our allegiance and obedience. He has acted, however, in love toward us and approaches us, not as a bullying egomaniac, but as "the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep," (John 10:11) demonstrating to us great grace, love, mercy and faithfulness.

God has placed us in a world filled with good things: sunsets and sunrises, delicious food, sex, love, beauty, the astonishing glories of the cosmos, humor, majestic mountain vistas, the sweeping power of the ocean, and so on. We enjoy these things to the fullest only as we see them as exhibitions of God's good character, of His power and good will, toward us. But even still, the atheist or demon worshiper may enjoy (to a lesser degree) these things, too. Would a bullying, cruel God allow this to go on? Would a divine tyrant allow the sunshine to warm the just and the unjust? The sort of God you describe above, then, doesn't at all comport with the God revealed in the Bible or in Creation.

hh92 said:

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses so far. I guess I'm just a bit confused by the whole thing really. Like I'm struggling to understand why God felt the need to create man, who would go on to sin despite being ignorant of the difference between good and evil, and would then fall into an inherent state of sinfulness only to be redeemed by God's grace and worship of God, the one who created them in the first place.

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First of all you must understand that the biblical account uses a symbolic language and it is not to be interpreted literally.
The original sin consists in the lack of trust in God, in the proud desire to affirm our authority above everything and everyone, in the proud desire to feel “the god of ourselves”, so that we can esablish the moral rules and do whatever we want to.

I fully recognize myself in Adam and Eve, because I know that even if I had lived in the ideal situation as described symbolically in the Genesis, I would have certainly done what Adam and Eve did. I think I rebelled against God, since I was a kid, even if I was not aware of that. In fact, every time children disoebey their parents (for example when they teach them that something is dangerous and they should not do it) they are unconsciously rebelling against God. Since the most tender age, children manfest forms of egoism and the desire to affirm their will against their parents' will; I think these behaviors represent embrionic forms of the original sin.

The story of the fall is not only a figurative account of Adam's sin, but it is also the figurative story of each of us; it tells us who we really are beyond our own awareness, it tells us that we are all proud rebels. Even if we had been created in Eden, we would have sinned and rebelled against God. Therefore, Adam's sin is also our sin.

hh92 said:

To me it's kinda like having a child and then saying to it "I have created you, now be obedient to me and worship me otherwise you will be punished for eternity."

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You have totally twisted the truth. You must understand that God is the only source of good, the only source of true love, true goodness and true life. We cannot live a truly happy and good life without being in communion with God.
God loves us infinitely, and He desires to lead each of us to the true life and true happiness, a condition existing only in communion with God. The original sin consists in the rejection of God, which interrupts the communion with God. Only if we accept the Truth in our heart, we can be in communion with God; and the Truth is that God is the only source of all good and we must trust in Him with all our heart. This is the reason why we must worship God; we must accept the Truth, and the Truth is that God deserves to be worshipped.

hh92 said:

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses so far. I guess I'm just a bit confused by the whole thing really. Like I'm struggling to understand why God felt the need to create man, who would go on to sin despite being ignorant of the difference between good and evil, and would then fall into an inherent state of sinfulness only to be redeemed by God's grace and worship of God, the one who created them in the first place. To me it's kinda like having a child and then saying to it "I have created you, now be obedient to me and worship me otherwise you will be punished for eternity."

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This is my take on it.

First of all none of what happened was a surprise to God, God could see the beginning and the end.
The overall plan is for a perfect world with a group of people on that world who worship God.

So there are two main paths to that goal that I can see. God could have created the perfect world right away along with the perfect people who love him and worship him only. The issue with this is if you don't have a choice are you truly free? Or are you more like a programmed robot? Now it's true that if you were like a perfect robot you wouldn't know what freedom of choice was and wouldn't miss it, but I don't think God wanted robot followers.
So the second way was to give the people freedom of choice. We may follow God or we might not. You might say that is risky, and yes it is. But for those who do choose God, it means so much more than no choice doesn't it? Like the difference between accepting a marriage proposal because you truly love the other person vs an arranged marriage. Most people want to know the other person chose them above all others not because their parents arranged it and they are following the rules.

I believe Adam and Eve were created in innocents and that to sin they needed an outside influence. Eve was deceived but Adam sinned knowingly. He didn't have to sin, he could have at that point called on God. It was disobedience that caused the fall. I also think this is why over in the New Testament Jesus is called the second Adam and why he was tempted by the devil in the desert. The Old Testament shows a dim picture of future events. The first man Adam was tempted and failed, the second Adam (Jesus) was tempted and succeeded. I believe that the first Adam was as literal as the second.