Adam and Eve sinning when they didn't have sinful nature/desires like us. How'd that happen?

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Guest1 said:
Adam and Eve sinning when they didn’t have sinful nature/desires like us. How’d that happen?
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For that, we have to understand
  1. What sin is and…
  2. Where sin comes from.
So, what is sin?

Romans 5:14 But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come.

Sin after the pattern of trespass of Adam. In other words, Adam left a pattern, which if one follows that pattern, one sins. What is that pattern?

I say, its disobedience to God’s word. I think I get confirmation with this verse:

1 John 3:4 Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness.[a]

Basically, God gave Adam a law, a command. Adam disobeyed that law and became lawless.

Where does sin come from?

Adam and Eve were born in justice and had righteous or innocent natures. There was no sin IN THEM. So, where did their sin come from?

It came from the temptation of Satan. Satan induced them to sin.

How about us, though? Where does our sin come from?

Matt 15:18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile. 19 [h]For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy.

We’re not like Adam and Eve, we do not have righteous and just natures. Our natures are fallen and the propensity to sin exists within us.
And what made them sin so easily than compared to the blessed virgin?
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Our Lady had a very special blessing compared to Adam and Eve. She was protected by the Holy Spirit from the time of her conception and did not exist even one moment without that protection.

There is no such teaching about Adam and Eve.
 
I believe it was St Anselm who arrived at one simple understanding: Adam sinned because he willed to sin. Maybe that should be obvious and yet maybe that’s as far as we can take it. All sin or moral evil is said to be committed by someone attempting to obtain some perceived good. Augustine put it this way, “The only possible source of evil is good.” This is because God made everything, and everything He made was good. Adam’s desire was to be “like God”, which, in itself, is not a bad desire (it’s the highest and best desire, in fact). But Adam thought this could be obtained best by being “like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”, as the catechism puts it. But as Jesus came to make clear centuries later, when the time was ripe, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”

Apparently God wants us to learn for ourselves of His inestimable worth and goodness-and of our need for Him. He placed His world in a “state of journeying to perfection” as the catechism also teaches. Adam’s act of disobedience, whereupon he dismissed God as God for all practical purposes, was a foolish one if nothing else. We’re here to learn of the foolishness and wrongness of his choice, and reverse it within ourselves, so to speak, with the help of revelation and grace. That’s a struggle, a matter of our own wills.
 
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Why do you think they sinned so easily? It likely took quite a lot of work for Satan to successfully tempt them.
 
I don’t think it took so much, just a foreign but attractive idea placed in their heads. I think James 1:14 applies to them as well as it does to us, “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” Even tho he framed it in terms of God doing the tempting in this case.
 
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For the same reason that angels sinned without having a sinful nature. Pride and a desire to be their own god.
 
It would have taken a lot, since they had no tendency towards sin. They had no disorder between their rational soul and their base desires. Sinning would have been a revolting thing to do. C.S.Lewis explores this quite well in the second book of his space trilogy, Perelandra. In that book, he describes the first man and woman on Venus and their temptation.
 
Everyone is tempted by sin. Jesus was tempted, Adam and Eve were tempted, and presumably Mary was tempted. But the difference is they did not fall to sin unlike Adam and Eve
 
Yes, everyone is tempted, but there is a big difference between everyone (us), and Jesus, Mary, or Adam and Eve. We fall into sin quite easily because of concupiscense, but Adam and Eve did not suffer from this. They had no desire to sin in anyway. They had no inclination towards sin. Their base desires were completely aligned with their rational soul towards goodness. So the question of the OP is a good question. I suspect the answer is that Satan worked really hard on their temptation (as we see when he tempted Christ). The Book of Genesis certainly hints at this when it describes him as a serpent. That was not a simple snake, more like a sea monster. Terror was probably one of the tool Satan employed.
 
There may’ve been an internal struggle but it’s hard to know how intense it was. They had original justice, which we receive at baptism, but even though they knew God somewhat more immediately than we do- “walking” with Him as it’s said- they nonetheless were neutral as I see it in terms of being fully bound to Him, as the catechism teaches we all must become.

They hadn’t yet come to an appreciation of just who He is and who they were relatively speaking: Creator vs creature. They didn’t know Him and His goodness to the extent that they would love Him first above all else. They hadn’t yet fulfilled the Greatest Commandment. That’s all a matter of the will, as it’s informed and tested and molded. By their act they preferred themselves to God as the catechism teaches.
 
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  1. Free will.
  2. A temptation too strong to resist.
  3. Love of self more than God - even if only for the moment.
 
Yes, I tried to edit that in but it stopped me for some reason. And they also had immortality, as long as they obeyed. But it doesn’t change much. Concupiscence wasn’t the reason for their first sin. They needed to know for themselves what we’re all here to learn now-just how real and good God is, and how much we need Him.
 
fhansen said:
(Lack of) cooncupiscence wasn’t the reason for their first sin
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No it wasn’t. But my point is that it certainly made sin harder for them. Like eating something you know you hate so bad it often makes you gag.
 
Well, for Jesus, it could not have been hard, sinning goes against His nature. God cannot sin.

Compared to Mary? We don’t know, do we? We just know that Mary persevered, and Admam and Eve did not. Does that mean it was easier for them to sin, or that Mary was just somehow more perseverant? We do know that both did not suffer from concupiscence.
 
The best explanation ive ever heard is from the priest who teaches religion at my school. basically there are three possible origins for temptations, from within oneself, from the world(and the people on it) and the devil. Adam and Eve had no original sin and were in the garden of eden, so that rules out the first 2 possible origins, however the 3rd( the devil) is still there. in short, temptations never came forth from pre-fall adam, pre-fall eve, jesus or mary but were imposed by external forces(the devil).

As for why Adam and Eve were able to give into the temptation imposed by the devil, that’s because they had free will.
 
Yes, they had no temptation from themselves, desires to sin that originated from within. I wish I had your explanation a couple months back on this forum. I was trying to make that case about Mary, and could not get the point across. I think other members thought my concept of lack of concupiscence was somehow belittling Mary (ie it was easy for her not to sin). I wasn’t, I suspect the devil worked really really hard with Mary also.
 
Guest1 said:
And what made them sin so easily than compared to the blessed virgin?
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The difference is this: Adam and Eve were created with free will, and used it to sin, disobeying God.
Mary also had free will, but used it to perfectly align her will with God’s.
 
Why did God allow the devil to tempt them when he knew what they would do? This sort of thing hurts my brain
 
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