A more charitable reading of the Adam and Eve story?

[goout]

Wesrock:

It’s a historical event told in a mythological style. While Catholics can believe in evolution, they are bound to affirm the historicity of the story of the Fall

Evolution could not happen without God. If the Bible says that Adam was created from the dust of the ground, I take this to be true. I am then left with the feeling that the ToE is somewhat a myth.
…

By analogy, “if the bible says there is a hammered metal dome over the skies I take this to be true”.
This information is literally in Genesis, yet no sane person takes this to be materialist fact.
Likewise, when Genesis makes a statement about the material makeup of man being formed from the dust of the ground, it is not a statement of materialist fact by the writer, it is a statement of a Truth about God and man that transcends materialism.

 

[edwest211]

Ash Wednesday: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.”

 

[goout]

Ash Wednesday: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.”

Yes very nice reminder that we are not God, that we are created, that we are body and soul.

 

[OneSheep]

Judging others leads to a kind of self- adoration.

Maybe more of a self-aggrandizement? But still, the judging effectively communicates to the offender that what they are doing is offensive or unacceptable, and the judging person is somewhat compelled to punish. At least that is the way the conscience seems to work. The self-aggrandizement is more of a side effect, which Jesus refers to in “taking the post out of our own eye”.

Like the Pharisee in the temple saying “Thank you God that I am not like him…”. It leads to thinking “I am better than him”.

There is definitely a rejection involved, which is what this thread is about to some degree. The aspect that is condemned in the other is a projection of the person’s shadow, which is by nature denied.

Certainly on the positive side would be seeing someone whom you think did a good job and praising him for it. The negative side is seeing that he did something wrong and judging him for it.

In terms of function, however, it’s all positive, right? It all helps us survive and thrive. There is an underlying positive, something that we can accept. Once we accept all that is underlying, then the more surface stuff has less impact. We can truly be grateful for the “negative side” you are talking about.

Again, the ultimate goal of the conscience in pushing us and pushing us to find a greater good than we already have is actually the Spirit’s pushing us to find the greatest good which is God.

There you go. There is a “greater good” even beneath rejection itself. So while rejection does lead to some suffering, some discord within and without, reconciliation is a path to discovering wholeness.

Does that jibe with your thoughts? It does centralize the importance of rejection in our spiritual life, it is the opposite of reconciliation or wholeness.

 

[agnimusca]

Well, this has been a revealing discussion to browse through!

I think @OneSheep’s proposal is really interesting, and in particular because of how it relates to theories of sin, the Kingdom, the conditions for our perfection/thriving as humans, and God’s nature as Actus Purus (existence itself).

 

[OneSheep]

Hmm. Please elaborate.

For example, how does it relate to theories of sin, and are there symbols of the Kingdom in the narrative?

 

[agnimusca]

Sure! I just got caught up in writing my followup – I was planning on getting it out in quick succession.

I think the proposal is especially interesting because it suggests a way of demystifying or ‘getting down to brass tacks’ about what it is or what it means to ‘reject God’s authority’ (I think @Wesrock and @fhansen were the first to make that connection), rather than just restating that it’s no good to reject God’s authority.

Here’s a version of the possible demystification, in two posts (oddly, I also suspect it might revive a connection to ‘mystical experience’ despite possibly demystifying the intellectual content):

• First, and as you already sketched, @OneSheep, something like the proposal might make sense of why sin is bad for us (and because it's bad for our relationship with God as Actus-Purus/Existence-Itself) and why the advent of sin brought on serious pain and suffering:
  
  • If God is Actus Purus and all creation reveals His goodness, then 'rejecting any part of life or creation' means ceasing to see the goodness of that part of life or creation and thus suffering -- feeling the pain that comes from fearing/desiring-the-destruction-of/etc. the part of creation we're rejecting.
  • Whereas before we had no fear and were grateful for all that God gave us, now there are parts of creation we falsely believe warrant utter rejection, rather than our being able to accept them and remain at peace with what is given.

 

[agnimusca]

• 
  Second, it might help resolve some of the sense of paradox in these ('freedom'-related) ideas:
  ➀ sin is something we do
  (and thus part of the created world)
  (and thus to that extent something God wills and sustains in being); and
  ➁ nothing God wills is bad (worth rejecting);
  ➂ sin is bad (worth rejecting).
  
  Here's the thought:
  • If sin involves a failure to see the goodness of (some parts of) God's creation -- a mistakenness about the way the world is -- then
    
    • It's worth rejecting, but in a very different sense of 'rejecting':
      • it's worth seeing (with compassion towards ourselves and all other sinners) as a hindrance to perfection/wholeness with God, and thus wholeheartedly desiring the total cessation of sin, but it's not worth rejecting in the way that makes us suffer (more).
      • (That's what sin itself does, not this different kind of rejection. Rejecting sin doesn't mean rejecting it in the way that makes us suffer more than the sin itself already causes us to suffer.)
        
    • So maybe we can resolve the appearance of paradox by saying that sin isn't rejection-worthy in the way that we we see things as being when we reject parts of God's creation in the way that makes us suffer (more than we already are suffering from sin itself).
      • In other words, maybe the "worth rejecting" in ➁ and the "worth rejecting" in ➂ have different meanings:
      • Claim ➁ might amount to something like "nothing God wills (none of his creation) is worth rejecting in the way we see thing as rejection-worthy that makes us suffer more, and
      • Claim ➂ might amount to something like "sin is worth rejecting in the sense of seeing as a hindrance to wholeness with God and being motivated (with compassion) to stop doing it.
  To bring it back to the possibility of demystifying the ‘authority’ stuff referenced by @Wesrock and @fhansen: basically, this seems to offer a way of seeing God’s overall command not to sin as a command not to reject any part of his creation (including sin!) in the more-suffering-causing way. And if we succeed in following that command, we remain in intimacy with Existence Itself – i.e., with God – and our suffering is removed, or at least radically changed. Because then we would (by definition) see it as itself acceptable or even as a gift.
  
  Thoughts? I’m definitely not sure this could work, but I find it really interesting!

 

[OneSheep]

• So maybe we can resolve the appearance of paradox by saying that sin isn’t rejection-worthy in the way that we we see things as being when we reject parts of God’s creation in the way that makes us suffer (more than we already are suffering from sin itself) .
• In other words, maybe the “worth rejecting” in ➁ and the “worth rejecting” in ➂ have different meanings:
• Claim ➁ might amount to something like "nothing God wills (none of his creation) is worth rejecting in the way we see thing as rejection-worthy that makes us suffer more , and
• Claim ➂ might amount to something like "sin is worth rejecting in the sense of seeing as a hindrance to wholeness with God and being motivated (with compassion) to stop doing it.

Good Morning agnimusca,

I dunno. To back up a little, when I consider something “worthy of rejection”, I am already considering, I am using those two blobs of grey matter in front to evaluate whether or not I could or should reject.

However, isn’t rejection one of those “gut-level” things? When I am addressing rejection, I am addressing something that has already happened before the frontal lobes can touch it. And then, once I am actually considering the rejection that has already happened, I am already sort of distant from it, right? The idea of “worthiness” becomes a matter of addressing whether or not I am going to hang onto rejecting something I have already rejected. Doesn’t this sort of nullify the aspect of “worthiness”?

Going back to the narrative, Adam and Eve were both rejecting and accepting, were they not? Sure, they were rejecting the mandate from God, but they were accepting the words of the serpent and in their inquisitiveness were testing the “goodness” of something that they were told to reject by God.

That is one of the mind-boggling things about it; it seems like God, in the story, did the rejecting. He rejected the tree as basically bad (dangerous) to man, and He rejected man when man made the wrong choice. Feel free to straighten me out on those weak observations.

Indeed, did Adam and Eve ever reject anything? Is defiance itself a rejection, or is it merely a focus on autonomy, a want of freedom?

To add more to the mix (as if you could possibly address all of this in one post, haha) isn’t the suffering we experience from rejecting part of the creative process itself, like Petra mentioned?

In that sense, it seems a little overblown to make a big deal about rejecting itself, it is more like we need to be mindful of when we are rejecting, and then address that when it occurs.

 

[OneSheep]

And if we succeed in following that command, we remain in intimacy with Existence Itself – i.e., with God – and our suffering is removed, or at least radically changed. Because then we would (by definition) see it as itself acceptable or even as a gift.

Good Morning!

Here’s another thing to consider:

I’m wondering if “acceptance” takes the form of cognitive empathy. At the most challenging level, can the Christian empathize with a God who allows suffering to occur, allows illness, pain, and death?

Can the believer empathize with a God who has us struggling to gain awareness, at such a slow pace?

 

[agnimusca]

Lots of great questions, @OneSheep ! Should be fun to work through them, I think. I’ll take the first one first:

[…] To back up a little, when I consider something “worthy of rejection”, I am already considering, I am using those two blobs of grey matter in front to evaluate whether or not I could or should reject.

However, isn’t rejection one of those “gut-level” things? When I am addressing rejection, I am addressing something that has already happened before the frontal lobes can touch it. And then, once I am actually considering the rejection that has already happened, I am already sort of distant from it, right? The idea of “worthiness” becomes a matter of addressing whether or not I am going to hang onto rejecting something I have already rejected. Doesn’t this sort of nullify the aspect of “worthiness”?

I suppose I think rejection, even when on the gut level (as I agree it sort of has to be, in order to cause suffering), kind of ‘comes packaged’ with an implicit but noticeable ‘rejection-worthiness’ commitment.

There’s evidence from neuroscience to back that up, involving the observation that emotions in humans and rodents apparently virtually always involve the frontal lobes’ ‘evaluative’ circuits (the circuits also involved in cool-headed decision-making).

But I think the more compelling evidence is from experience. When I, at least, ‘find something unacceptable’ in that emotional way – say, being laughed at by someone I respect after asking them a serious question – I’m in that very moment resistant to the (more ‘cognitive’!) proposal that in fact it’s not bad that they laughed at me like that.

I might come to agree with that proposal (that it’s not bad they laughed at me) without really agreeing on the ‘gut’ level, but often enough coming to agree that it’s not bad because (say) their laughing at me doesn’t mean they don’t like me will change the gut feeling itself. In all, the original feeling is not ‘just of rejecting’ – or rather, that feeling itself seems to include the idea that the thing I’m rejecting deserves it, so the proposal that the rejection is unwarranted can be a direct challenge to the rejection itself. Does that make sense?

But I’m not sure, @OneSheep, that I get your last thing. Even if we get some distance from the rejection (i.e., even if we’re not actively rejecting?) – even then, considering whether we want to ‘renew’ the rejection could be a live question, no? Like, deciding whether the thing we were rejecting was worthy of the rejection?

 

[OneSheep]

But I think the more compelling evidence is from experience. When I, at least, ‘find something unacceptable’ in that emotional way – say, being laughed at by someone I respect after asking them a serious question – I’m in that very moment resistant to the (more ‘cognitive’!) proposal that in fact it’s not bad that they laughed at me like that.

Before I respond, please appreciate the fact that I have resisted inserting a pile of laughing emoticons toward your serious response.

I think I’m following your logic here. “it’s not bad”, though, is not the only thing that is probably going on. With further calming, it might be “I could have done that in the same circumstances”. Either way, it is a movement from rejection to acceptance (probably).

I might come to agree with that proposal (that it’s not bad they laughed at me) without really agreeing on the ‘gut’ level, but often enough coming to agree that it’s not bad because (say) their laughing at me doesn’t mean they don’t like me will change the gut feeling itself . In all, the original feeling is not ‘just of rejecting’ – or rather, that feeling itself seems to include the idea that the thing I’m rejecting deserves it, so the proposal that the rejection is unwarranted can be a direct challenge to the rejection itself. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense when remembering this:

basically, this seems to offer a way of seeing God’s overall command not to sin as a command not to reject any part of his creation (including sin!) in the more-suffering- causing way. And if we succeed in following that command, we remain in intimacy with Existence Itself – i.e., with God – and our suffering is removed, or at least radically changed. Because then we would (by definition) see it as itself acceptable or even as a gift.

To summarize, then, are you saying that when we do have the gut-level rejection, the Adam and Eve story has the purpose of pointing out that such rejection, when ultimately deemed “worthy”, prolongs or increases suffering?

Of course, this is in not in reference to the “different kind” of rejecting, the objective avoidance of that which is a hindrance to wholeness (sin). Intuition tells me that this “different kind” may begin as a gut-level reaction, but sort of transforms to an unemotional commitment. Is that what you are thinking?

 

[agnimusca]

[…] Adam and Eve were both rejecting and accepting, were they not? Sure, they were rejecting the mandate from God, but they were accepting the words of the serpent and in their inquisitiveness were testing the “goodness” of something that they were told to reject by God.

Here’s how I would try to understand all that if what’s going on is centrally something about ‘rejection’ in the loaded sense we’ve been talking about.

First there’s the obvious rejection you point out: they rejected God’s claim (or command – the grammar isn’t obvious in English) in favor of the snake’s.

Second, roughly in line with your overall interpretation in the post: if eating the fruit gives them knowledge of what it’s like to find unacceptable what is given by God, there’s a second rejection – and we see it play out immediately, with them exercising their new capacity (or new awareness of their capacity) for rejection: they find their nakedness unacceptable, and as a kind of corollary, they find it unacceptable to be found by God after having failed to trust Him about the tree.

 

[agnimusca]

So in response to this question

Indeed, did Adam and Eve ever reject anything? Is defiance itself a rejection, or is it merely a focus on autonomy, a want of freedom?

I think the answer might as well be “yes”, they rejected something – at least their nakedness and being found by God.

I think I feel the tension you’re pointing out, though, insofar as their curiosity seems hardly blameworthy, and faced with two people (God and the snake) confidently telling these seemingly intellectually dependent humans two conflicting things, it doesn’t seem too egregious to have gone with one over the other.
  So I think it’s pretty important to remember that (per St. Thomas) whatever words we use to say something true about God’s actions or attributes, those words have a very different meaning than when we use those same words to attribute actions or properties to created beings. God doesn’t ‘tell people things’ the way humans (or, presumably, prelapsarian snakes) do. So we can imagine Adam and Eve knew there was a big difference between God and the snake, and that going with the snake’s version was going against the true version, even if some wishful thinking might have gotten them to deceive themselves about it a bit.

To be clear, I don’t think that means they were blameworthy, though I guess it’s tradition to think they were. I just think it brings into a nice functional package the two kinds of rejection: turning away from what you know to be true (in the sense of statements, propositions, etc.) and rejecting in the ‘finding it unacceptable’/suffering way. Namely, the first kind of leads to the other, and desires can lead us to weaken our commitment to the truth in the first place. And (maybe) staying firmly on the side of truth, accepting what is given, and so on, is sufficient for avoiding the second kind of rejection that leads to suffering.
  So I don’t know if defiance, in the sense involved in going with the snake’s rather than God’s version of the causal structure related to death and the tree, is itself a rejection (of that latter kind). But it’s at least intimately tied to it. And if union with God just is what God gives us when we open ourselves entirely to Him and His creation, then maybe, sure – maybe then turning away from God’s account of the causal structure related to death and the tree is itself a rejection of the second kind, though it isn’t conveyed as directly. Maybe it’s turning away from union with God, immediately causing a feeling of separation, anxiety of self-reliance in an uncertain world, and dissatisfaction because of our limited powers and unclarity about what is good for us.

 

[agnimusca]

(Part of what I like about this interpretation is that it seems more like ‘cause and effect’ reasoning, which fits with the teaching that sin is its own punishment and hell is mainly constituted by our own refusal to accept God’s presence. God knew – though He didn’t want it to happen – that if we came to this new realization of our capacity to reject what He gives us in creation – i.e., to ‘know evil’ – we would suffer and die, here mainly in a spiritual sense of “die” – our suffering would deepen and be experienced by us as indicating something worthy of rejection, something rightfully keeping us from accepting what God has given. Which is an illusion. So on soething like the interpretation we’re playing with, there’s an illusion underlying our knowledge of good and evil, namely an illusion that there is something among God’s creation that deserves rejection in the adding-more-suffering way.)

 

[agnimusca]

That is one of the mind-boggling things about it; it seems like God, in the story, did the rejecting. He rejected the tree as basically bad (dangerous) to man, and He rejected man when man made the wrong choice. Feel free to straighten me out on those weak observations.

Right, God definitely does some rejecting: rejecting the tree as dangerous and rejecting man from the garden. But (even setting aside the stuff about our words always meaning something different when attributing things truly to God), those aren’t the relevant kinds of rejection. God can’t reject in the adding-more-suffering way, because He is already in perfect union with Himself. But I agree it’s not necessarily easy to read it that way; this Genesis 3 can sound like an ‘angry God’ reading. It also doesn’t, for sure – it’s all pretty nicely readable as God being at most sad and loving about the whole thing. He even makes them clothes, despite their being fine without them before they became convinced it was a bad thing to be naked!

 

[agnimusca]

[…]isn’t the suffering we experience from rejecting part of the creative process itself, like Petra mentioned?

In that sense, it seems a little overblown to make a big deal about rejecting itself, it is more like we need to be mindful of when we are rejecting, and then address that when it occurs.

I don’t think we have to say so. I really like what @PetraG said, talking about

[…] a way in which suffering leads by the transformative grace of God to beatitude: “Blessed are they…”

– but I think that’s a very different attitude towards suffering than normal suffering. When we’re suffering and don’t see it in that redemptive, transformative way, it just sucks. So I think it’s worth making a big deal about it, partly because I think it’s precisely what keeps us from being in union with God and His Grace. There’s an element of separation from God in suffering, basically, and it comes from rejecting what He has given us. I also don’t think it’s an essential part of anything, this ‘unredeemed’ suffering. I think God on the cross showed us how to relate to our suffering – all of it – and when pain and suffering come up, we can now relate to it in that way.

But again, I don’t think it’s worth making a big deal about in the adding-more-suffering way! When we reject what God has given, that doesn’t mean we should also (in that adding-more-suffering way) reject our rejection! Much as that little whirlpool of suffering has a certain gravitational pull to it. So I agree – let’s just be compassionate and address the rejection (sin and suffering both) when it occurs. And go to confession and pray for help.

 

[OneSheep]

Here’s how I would try to understand all that if what’s going on is centrally something about ‘rejection’ in the loaded sense we’ve been talking about.

First there’s the obvious rejection you point out: they rejected God’s claim (or command – the grammar isn’t obvious in English) in favor of the snake’s.

Second, roughly in line with your overall interpretation in the post: if eating the fruit gives them knowledge of what it’s like to find unacceptable what is given by God, there’s a second rejection – and we see it play out immediately, with them exercising their new capacity (or new awareness of their capacity) for rejection: they find their nakedness unacceptable, and as a kind of corollary, they find it unacceptable to be found by God after having failed to trust Him about the tree.

What you did not address, though, is that the existence itself demanded (instructed?) that the couple reject part of existence. Is this the “other” rejection, the simple “avoid this”? Oops, I posted this before I saw your post 97. I hope to get time to look at that again later.

After eating of the fruit, the couple “knew” that they were naked. Given that the tree was called “knowledge of good and evil”, it still appears that it symbolizes the conscience rather than rejection, though most certainly rejection is part of the functioning of the conscience itself. In the story, God punishes the couple, which is exactly what our conscience does to us when we break the rules. Is this interpretation of the allegory somehow less charitable?

And then, the greatest rejection of all in the story is the banishment from the garden, is it not? Is it more charitable to think of this as merely a depiction of the behavior of the conscience, with its illusions and so forth, or is it more charitable to think of “existence itself” having the mind to banish? Isn’t “existence itself”, in the story, saying “you are worthy of rejection”?

If, on the other hand, this is an allegory of a functioning conscience, the banishment stands for the rejection of self or other, in the form of condemnation or guilt. It is not God, but the image of God depicted by the conscience, that does the banishing.

So, for the tree being the symbol of rejection, does it fall apart? Is the “devil in the details”?

 

[julie317]

I read The Forgotten Books of Eden : The First Book Of Adam And Eve & it was so very moving. You can google it with PDF at the end & read it online. The first & second books are very good & worth reading. Not in the Bible but did not seem to contradict the Holy Scriptures - kind of brought it all to life. Mentions Adams bones carried by Noah to Jerusalem & buried at Golgotha. A fascinating read with a lot of Church tradition in it.

 

[OneSheep]

Right, God definitely does some rejecting: rejecting the tree as dangerous and rejecting man from the garden. But (even setting aside the stuff about our words always meaning something different when attributing things truly to God), those aren’t the relevant kinds of rejection . God can’t reject in the adding-more-suffering way, because He is already in perfect union with Himself. But I agree it’s not necessarily easy to read it that way; this Genesis 3 can sound like an ‘angry God’ reading. It also doesn’t, for sure – it’s all pretty nicely readable as God being at most sad and loving about the whole thing. He even makes them clothes, despite their being fine without them before they became convinced it was a bad thing to be naked!

Yeah, sounds good, but there is this wrench in the thing. Catholic dogma says that God was angry and indignant about what Adam and Eve did. Again, this speaks of an anthropomorphized image of God, a God that is a projection based on the workings of the conscience. I know, the dogma definitely does not make sense in terms of God being in “perfect union with Himself”, but the formation of the dogma can be explained in that way. (Of course, there will be many that find that explanation unconscionable!)

So, when we are talking about a charitable reading of the Adam and Eve story, it might be (but not necessarily so) fruitful to do an interpretation that also explains the dogmatic reading.

For example, one can entirely accept the reading such that “God was angry about this” as an image coming from our very nature, an image that is to be respected and honored as not only natural but useful. It is not something to be debated, the image itself can only be addressed through understanding and appreciating the functional beauty of conscience itself and the projections (and illusions) created by it.

Keeping that aside, it might be interesting to continue to pursue the additional symbolism we can glean from the story in light of the “tree symbolizing rejection itself” scenario.

Shall we?