That was interesting. To me, what I see so crucial in Eve's and Adam's choices is they trusted someone else (serpent, themselves, other person) over God, instead of God. They "broke trust" (and...also notice that really it means too that on a key level they didn't believe, didn't have faith in Him, even knowing He existed, even walking with Him prior to then).
Yes, trusting Satan was part of the issue. But you're still trying to apply post-Fall thinking, which we all do of course. It's not an easy thing to break the paradigm. I would recommend Bonhoeffer's
Ethics. After I read it, my reaction was, "Um, What was that?" Then I thought about it for a year or so and it finally sank in.
You'll also have to allow me to geek out for a second. Science is a huge part of my job, but at one point I was struggling to explain certain machine behaviors and no one could give me an answer so I dug deep into the Philosophy of Science. Two things from that experience apply here. First, we must always model the world, i.e. we must always approximate. Second, approximations mean there is
always more than one answer (i.e. model) to any question.
The result for our purposes here is that the human will manifests as a random process in scientific terms. Therefore, the only way to deal with it is through the statistics of populations. That means the exact details of Adam's will are unknowable to us.
We will never identify the key combination of elements in his finite nature that led to sin. Again, a great book that demonstrates that is Asimov's
Foundation series.
Well, I agree that God could create no bad thing. And certainly A & E were perfect according to their created natures. But to make their limitations the cause of failure to choose rightly would also mean that God blamed them for expressing those inherent limitations.
Per what I said above I would disagree. Genesis indicates God gave them a chance (so to speak). You're probably familiar with all the questions that hang around this narrative such as: What if only Eve sinned? What if Adam had said he was sorry? Why was Satan there if Eden was perfect? etc. Those are good questions because they point out that God doesn't really tell us the exact detail that constituted their sin. As such, we shouldn't speculate.
Maybe this works in the overall bigger picture, since God already had a plan of salvation in place, foreknowing their failure, knowing the beginning from the end and planning on using the Fall for His ultimate good purposes. This might also align with the Catholic teaching regarding God's having made His world "in a state of journeying to perfection".
Here's where you won't like my position. I would say knowing the future is a logical impossibility. Therefore, God didn't know they would choose to eat from the tree. That does not impinge on his maximal nature. There is a long list of logical absurdities that don't apply to God.
However, God did have a plan. And that plan always included Christ, which is to say it always included Christ's incarnation for our sake. The perfection of God's plan, then, is that it would work no matter what Adam decided to do. If he decided to eat, it would resurrect him from death. If he decided not to eat, it would prevent him from ever knowing death ... or whatever combinations you can imagine.
Anyway, I think He's telling us that something was missing in Adam & Eve.
I disagree. What God's telling us is that Christ was always a necessary part of the plan, and because Christ is part of the plan we remain (in Him) perfect.
