Adam & Logic, Third Edition, Original Relationship between Humanity and Divinity

[cfauster]

By the way, like Catholics, Lutherans too have diverse views on these questions.

I think my own view is somewhere between those of Rev. Jack Mahoney and Rev. Nicanor Austriaco. I have not read Mahoney’s book, but apparently Austriaco saw a need to respond to Mahoney, as Austriaco explains at the beginning of his essay The Historicity of Adam And Eve (Part II: The Doctrine of Original Sin):

In his book, Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration, Jesuit theologian and Catholic priest Jack Mahoney, S.J., has proposed that the truths of evolutionary biology have made the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings on human origins obsolete: “I argue that with the acceptance of the evolutionary origin of humanity there is no longer a need or a place in Christian beliefs for the traditional doctrines of original sin, the Fall, and human concupiscence resulting from that sin.”

Mahoney is not alone in holding this view, and there are many other scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, who think that these traditional Christian doctrines, especially the doctrine of original sin, need to be jettisoned.

In this essay, I respond to these theologians by arguing that the doctrine of original sin is an integral part of divine revelation that not only emerges from our understanding that God is good but also explains our lived experience of human brokenness. In this essay and the three essays that follow on the historicity of Adam and Eve, I will also show that it is a doctrine that is not incompatible with an evolutionary account of creation.

 

[grannymh]

Your question made me think, what was so special about the garden, that it had to be closed off to Adam and Eve, and guarded. Was the garden a literal place on earth where access to God was granted,(the tree of life?) and so by cutting it off from man, man was cut off from God.
Like you said God visited the garden, spoke directly to Adam, Eve and the fallen angel. But God continues to interact with man even outside the garden. The garden could sound like a heavenly place, it contained the tree of life.

Basic information about the Garden of Eden.

Because Adam is a literal real person, he would live in a real literal geographical place. Apparently, once the garden was closed, it disappeared in the sense that no one knows where it is. This disappearance could have been caused by an earthquake, fire, even major flooding. Science has discovered a number of ancient natural disasters including drought which would have destroyed all signs of vegetation. Subsequent re-growth would not have Adam as its original gardener and thus it is not the original Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3: 21, in my opinion, does not sound like Adam and Eve were cut off from God. If humanity were truly cut off from God, then Sacred Scripture would not exist. As you correctly said: “But God continues to interact with man even outside the garden. The garden could sound like a heavenly place, it contained the tree of life.”

Yes, the garden does sound like a heavenly place, but that does not mean that the Catholic Church defined the garden as the abode of the Beatific Vision, commonly known as heaven.

**Definition of Beatific Vision. **CCC Glossary, page 867
“The contemplation of God in heavenly glory, a gift of God which is a constitutive element of the happiness (or beatitude) of heaven (1028, 1720).”

CCC 1028 Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”:
How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends.

CCC 1720 The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man:

• the coming of the Kingdom of God;
• the vision of God: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”

-entering into the joy of the Lord;

• entering into God’s rest:
  There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise. Behold what will be at the end without end. For what other end do we have, if not to reach the kingdom which has no end?

 

[simpleas]

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13103736&postcount=21 has a similar summary.

I’m not sure about this bit :

Notice that this account of original sin sees the effect of original sin, not as an addition to or a corruption of human nature – certainly not as a tendency to evil or a perversion that makes the human being evil as such – but as a privation of that nature, an absence, a lack, a wound, **that leaves human beings struggling with the consequences of their nature as it had been created and evolved. **It is this struggle that makes the human person prone to evil acts though he himself is not inherently evil.

Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but it sounds like the soul and body are two separate things. The body was created, but it didn’t evolve according to genesis. The soul and the body are one unit, both created at the same time. What is written in bold sounds to me like the soul was put into the body of a creature that had evolved, and had a basic animal nature that was given a soul from God to animate the body.

 

[simpleas]

Something all of us can relate to --regarding some point.
General summary of the Garden of Eden. Feel free to add to it.

Adam and Eve, before the fall, lived a perfect life. There was no sadness, no sickness, no death. It was literally heaven on Earth. But after the fall, due to original sin, everything went to hell. Death came into the world, our understanding became opaque, we became prone and weak to sin.

Question – I would appreciate an answer even if it is a guess.

Where is God as the Creator (Genesis 1:1) in the above summary of the Garden of Eden?

I thought about your question, I have no answer, I don’t really understand what you are asking.

As for the summary of the garden, I can not relate to it ever have being perfect, only good, since what I have learnt on CAF.
I really can not imagine A&E skipping around in a garden, being completely happy all day, not having to be concerned about anything . Where would their human emotions develop, their relation with God develop. If all was perfect, it would be fixed.

 

[simpleas]

Basic information about the Garden of Eden.

Because Adam is a literal real person, he would live in a real literal geographical place. Apparently, once the garden was closed, it disappeared in the sense that no one knows where it is. This disappearance could have been caused by an earthquake, fire, even major flooding. Science has discovered a number of ancient natural disasters including drought which would have destroyed all signs of vegetation. Subsequent re-growth would not have Adam as its original gardener and thus it is not the original Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3: 21, in my opinion, does not sound like Adam and Eve were cut off from God. If humanity were truly cut off from God, then Sacred Scripture would not exist. As you correctly said: “But God continues to interact with man even outside the garden. The garden could sound like a heavenly place, it contained the tree of life.”

Yes, the garden does sound like a heavenly place, but that does not mean that the Catholic Church defined the garden as the abode of the Beatific Vision, commonly known as heaven.

**Definition of Beatific Vision. **CCC Glossary, page 867
“The contemplation of God in heavenly glory, a gift of God which is a constitutive element of the happiness (or beatitude) of heaven (1028, 1720).”

CCC 1028 Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”:
How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends.

CCC 1720 The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man:

• the coming of the Kingdom of God;
• the vision of God: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”

-entering into the joy of the Lord;

• entering into God’s rest:
  There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise. Behold what will be at the end without end. For what other end do we have, if not to reach the kingdom which has no end?

Yes I don’t think Eden was heaven because it was on the earth, and the earth is the earth and Heaven is…well…Heaven.
I was just thinking why God created a garden, when there was the whole earth to live on.
I suppose one small area was needed for two little humans to start off!
Then when they sinned this garden was closed off to them.

Apparently no one has seen God. Not even the prophets, nor A&E even when they were still sinless.

 

[grannymh]

I thought about your question, I have no answer, I don’t really understand what you are asking.

As for the summary of the garden, I can not relate to it ever have being perfect, only good, since what I have learnt on CAF.
I really can not imagine A&E skipping around in a garden, being completely happy all day, not having to be concerned about anything . Where would their human emotions develop, their relation with God develop. If all was perfect, it would be fixed.

You have some realistic good comments about the garden.

Regarding the question in post 213. The question was simply giving people the opportunity to defend that basic summary. I did not expect real answers. On the other hand, I was curious.

 

[grannymh]

To begin.

Relationships are an everyday thing. They are basic to society. They range from casual to a 50-year marriage to the same person. The base of advertising is to form a relationship with us so we will spend our money on the advertised product. However, it can be hard to see “relationship” in some TV ads. Still, money changing hands is kind of a relationship between a business and a willing consumer.

When we begin examining the relationship between Adam and his Creator, we tend to take it for granted in the same way we take it for granted that the first three chapters of Genesis are not a science textbook. By the way,
Genesis 2: 20 is basic biology and the shift from Genesis 1: 25 to Genesis 1: 26 is the difference between “kind” (older scientific term). Obviously, the science of agriculture is in Genesis 2: 15. And basic survival of the human species is Genesis 2: 18.

The first thing to understand about Adam’s relationship with his Creator is that it is not a relationship between equals. Yes, I read post after post which describes God on the human level when it comes to events in the first three chapters in Genesis.

 

[fhansen]

Cool, yeah, just as Onesheep said similar, they did not know what they were doing. They saw a good in what they thought was of benefit to them.
Desire was in place and they acted upon it due to having freewill.

This seems to have been stretched a bit farther than* I* intended it to at any rate. All evil is done in the name of good-and all evil is nothing more than a deprivation of goodness in some manner; evil has no reality of its own apart from good, to the extent that Augustine would say, “The only possible source of evil is good.” Why? Because God created everything and everything He created is good (Gen). This doesn’t mean that evil ain’t evil; it just means that evil unnecessarily and unreasonably twists something good into something less good. Pride, for example, is a distorted version of self-love, which in itself is good. So pride, according to Aquinas, is “inordinate self-love”. Appetite for food is good; gluttony is not. Appetite for sex is good, lust causes harm. Power and authority are goods; the arrogant misuse of them, resulting in tyranny or domination, is not. The fruit appeared* good* to Eve.

From a ‘white liar’ to the worst criminal and political monsters in the world, they all committed their atrocities by thinking they were doing something good in one way or another. And this ability to twist wrong into right, opposing the will of God in the process, began with a seemingly innocuous failure to trust God. This doesn’t mean they didn’t know better; it just means that they *‘chose worse’ *for one reason or another, enticed by their lusts instead of remaining true to a voice they may barely even be able to hear later on. Adam & Eve heard it much more clearly in Eden-but presumably less and less clearly, along with all mankind, as they became distanced from God due to their exile. I’ll expand on some of this by quoting myself from a recent thread, with a few changes:

They failed to trust God, and in that they also failed to trust their own consciences. By disobeying that voice they managed to divorce themselves not only from God but even from their very selves in some manner according to the catechism. And this rift is evident in human behavior and relationships daily in our world.

Adam and Eve, and all humanity, would now have the “opportunity”, fortunate or otherwise, to learn, by experience, that this voice, which originates, along with their very beings, from their Creator and not from themselves, is honest, good, trustworthy, and true even as they possess the freedom to dismiss, ignore, and reject it. And this voice, of truth and rectitude, is most clearly and definitively articulated, revealed, and expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, by the mercy of God, since the experience of good and evil, without the merciful addition of revelation and grace, would leave our “educative” process short of certain necessary materials or data.

And Jesus was likewise dismissed, ignored, rejected, even hated, humiliated, tortured, and killed in the end, by humans who preferred “themselves” to that voice of truth, at least until we finally begin to recognize its existence, beauty, and importance.

 

[fhansen]

And here is another great question. A temptation must be perceived as something good by the tempted. None of us are “tempted” to eat hog manure (except that in so saying, the mind may do some very bizarre things). No, temptation appeals to innate desires. Why do we have those desires?

If Adam had not the innate desires for power, status, knowledge, and much more, then the temptation would have fallen on deaf ears. No, the product was an easy sell, made even more tempting by God forbidding its consumption.

And God made us with innate desires for power, status, and much more, just like he put the same longings in other creatures, for good reason! In addition, God made us with the desire for autonomy, to desire freedom from any restriction whatsoever.

But God made us with the obligation to consciously obey our Creator, as the rest of creation does* un*consciously. The question involves how this can and will take place. The purpose of our freedom is to accomplish this task, with God’s help, to learn why and how to bind our freedom “definitively to its ultimate good which is God” (para 1732 CCC) That’s our job here on earth. This is simply, profoundly, an obligation to *love *in the end, an obligation *of *love and an obligation *to *love.That’s all God ever wanted for Adam-because it’s Adam’s ultimate good-and to exist in any other manner or state is to have at least one foot in hell, if not both eventually. We’re sort of half way between heaven and hell here on earth until we’re bound definitively to God, our ultimate good. Until then chaos and disharmony reign within us to one degree or another.

And our omniscient God when putting the tree of knowledge in the garden in the first place knew that Adam would eat of it, given all the aspects of his God-given nature. There is no logic in creating man and putting him in a place of temptation just to let the story play out as He already knew. No, the story was written without the given that God is omniscient, the story was a means by which we can blame ourselves, and not God, for our condition. Jesus completely changes the story.

The tree simply represents our freedom to disobey- in conjunction with our obligation* not *to do so in light of our limitations relative to our Creator. Perhaps ironically these same limitations may provide the very possibility or potential for our disobedience.

Let’s get the point of the Adam/Eve story: “we can love God, even though we have all of these problematic conditions such as blame and death. It’s not God’s fault.” Jesus turns that story completely upside down, through forgiveness he obliterates blame altogether and shows that God loves us unconditionally. He showed us that God does not need to be appeased, as there has never been a change in His love for us.

Yes, there’s much truth in this. God doesn’t need to change His perspective; *man, *who conceived a distorted image of God with his first sin, needs to do so. But Jesus also makes clear that justice isn’t mocked or ignored; good and evil are realities; we can freely choose evil/no God/hell; salvation isn’t universal, or forced upon us.

In any case the commandment against eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a commandment to obey God. Adam and Eve could do anything-eat of any other tree- but they could not eat of *that *one-they were obliged to obey their Creator IOW. The whole doctrine of OS and the need for redemption hangs on man’s failure to fulfill this obligation.

Angels were, like man, left to their own counsel, to exercise their freedom for better or worse. But apparently they were made with such superior knowledge that, speculatively, their sin was less forgivable than A & E’s. Adam & Eve, while responsible for their sin, were, in God’s wisdom, given a “reprieve”, so to speak, which would’ve been incorporated into part God’s plan for them to begin with, so they could be formed/molded into a perfected being. This world is a place where our free will is exercised over* time,* where we’re actually given the opportunity to experiment with or experience good and evil, to struggle with God’s will as opposed to some other will, to ultimately see which we prefer, which we’ll choose; man’s will being the “prize”, so to speak.

 

[simpleas]

This seems to have been stretched a bit farther than* I* intended it to at any rate. All evil is done in the name of good-and all evil is nothing more than a deprivation of goodness in some manner; evil has no reality of its own apart from good, to the extent that Augustine would say, “The only possible source of evil is good.” Why? Because God created everything and everything He created is good (Gen). This doesn’t mean that evil ain’t evil; it just means that evil unnecessarily and unreasonably twists something good into something less good. Pride, for example, is a distorted version of self-love, which in itself is good. So pride, according to Aquinas, is “inordinate self-love”. Appetite for food is good; gluttony is not. Appetite for sex is good, lust causes harm. Power and authority are goods; the arrogant misuse of them, resulting in tyranny or domination, is not. The fruit appeared* good* to Eve.

From a ‘white liar’ to the worst criminal and political monsters in the world, they all committed their atrocities by thinking they were doing something good in one way or another. And this ability to twist wrong into right, opposing the will of God in the process, began with a seemingly innocuous failure to trust God. This doesn’t mean they didn’t know better; it just means that they *‘chose worse’ *for one reason or another, enticed by their lusts instead of remaining true to a voice they may barely even be able to hear later on. Adam & Eve heard it much more clearly in Eden-but presumably less and less clearly, along with all mankind, as they became distanced from God due to their exile. I’ll expand on some of this by quoting myself from a recent thread, with a few changes:

Well if everything in the garden was good, then even their own desire would have been good, a least to them. Eve seeing the fruit as good, the knowledge it could bring would be good. They had yet to experience evil, evil did not exist until they brought it into the garden with the help of the fallen angel.
Now we can experience both good and evil, choose freely between them, and hopeful make it to heaven, where I think we are to be made perfected before God.

I wonder why God made A&E in a state of original holiness and justice, knowing they would abuse his trust, then sending man kind on a journey to perfection. Why not just have had them start like us, beings made in God’s image, on a journey to discover goodness, rather than evil.

 

[simpleas]

This popped up in my emails today. Make of it what you will.

Original Blessing

Yet another gift of Native and Celtic spirituality is their unashamed welcome of some kind of “original blessing” instead of starting with a problem like “original sin.” Pelagius (354-418), one of the early Christian Celtic writers, opposed the doctrine of original sin coined by his contemporary Augustine. Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness. The Celts saw creation as good and as a theophany or revelation of God’s very being just as Genesis had taught.

Philip Newell writes: “Eriugena, the ninth-century Irish teacher, says that if goodness were extracted from the universe, all things would cease to exist. For goodness is not simply a feature of life; it is the very essence of life. Goodness gives rise to being, just as evil leads to nonbeing or to a destruction and denial of life’s sacredness.” [1] According to Newell, Pelagius “stressed not only the essential goodness of creation–and our capacity to glimpse what he called ‘the shafts of divine light’ that penetrate the thin veil dividing heaven and earth–but, very specifically, the essential goodness of humanity. Pelagius maintained that the image of God can be seen in every newborn child and that, although obscured by sin, it exists at the heart of every person, waiting to be released through the grace of God.” [2]

Those who live in close proximity to the natural world seem to come to know the universe as benevolent much more easily, despite its inherent violence and changeability. This belief leads to very different values than when your whole worldview begins with a theological or moral problem to be solved.

Huston Smith describes “primal peoples” as “oriented to a single cosmos, which sustains them like a living womb. Because they assume that it exists to nurture them, they have no disposition to challenge it, defy it, refashion it, or escape from it. It is not a place of exile or pilgrimage, though pilgrimages take place within it. Its space is not homogenous; the home has a number of rooms, we might say, some of which are normally invisible. But together they constitute a single domicile. Primal peoples are concerned with the maintenance of personal, social, and cosmic harmony. But the overriding goal of salvation that dominates the historical religions is virtually absent from them.” [3] They are not primarily concerned with salvation as a way to escape from a sinful world and go to heaven or the next world. “They make it clear that we humans are not here simply as transients waiting for a ticket to somewhere else. The Earth itself is Christos, is Buddha, is Allah, is Gaia.” [4]

Genesis began with six clear statements of original blessing or inherent goodness (Genesis 1:10-31), and the words “original sin” are not in the New Testament. Yet the Church became so preoccupied with the fly in the ointment, the flaw in the beauty that we forgot and even missed out on any original blessing. We saw Jesus primarily as a problem-solver rather than as a revealer of the very heart and image of God (Colossians 1:15f). We must now rebuild on a foundation of original goodness, and not on a foundation of original curse or sin. We dug a pit so deep that most people and most theologies could not get back out of it. You must begin with yes. You cannot begin with no, or it is not a beginning at all. [5]

 

[fhansen]

This popped up in my emails today. Make of it what you will.

Original Blessing

Yet another gift of Native and Celtic spirituality is their unashamed welcome of some kind of “original blessing” instead of starting with a problem like “original sin.” Pelagius (354-418), one of the early Christian Celtic writers, opposed the doctrine of original sin coined by his contemporary Augustine. Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness. The Celts saw creation as good and as a theophany or revelation of God’s very being just as Genesis had taught.

Philip Newell writes: “Eriugena, the ninth-century Irish teacher, says that if goodness were extracted from the universe, all things would cease to exist. For goodness is not simply a feature of life; it is the very essence of life. Goodness gives rise to being, just as evil leads to nonbeing or to a destruction and denial of life’s sacredness.” [1] According to Newell, Pelagius “stressed not only the essential goodness of creation–and our capacity to glimpse what he called ‘the shafts of divine light’ that penetrate the thin veil dividing heaven and earth–but, very specifically, the essential goodness of humanity. Pelagius maintained that the image of God can be seen in every newborn child and that, although obscured by sin, it exists at the heart of every person, waiting to be released through the grace of God.” [2]

Those who live in close proximity to the natural world seem to come to know the universe as benevolent much more easily, despite its inherent violence and changeability. This belief leads to very different values than when your whole worldview begins with a theological or moral problem to be solved.

Huston Smith describes “primal peoples” as “oriented to a single cosmos, which sustains them like a living womb. Because they assume that it exists to nurture them, they have no disposition to challenge it, defy it, refashion it, or escape from it. It is not a place of exile or pilgrimage, though pilgrimages take place within it. Its space is not homogenous; the home has a number of rooms, we might say, some of which are normally invisible. But together they constitute a single domicile. Primal peoples are concerned with the maintenance of personal, social, and cosmic harmony. But the overriding goal of salvation that dominates the historical religions is virtually absent from them.” [3] They are not primarily concerned with salvation as a way to escape from a sinful world and go to heaven or the next world. “They make it clear that we humans are not here simply as transients waiting for a ticket to somewhere else. The Earth itself is Christos, is Buddha, is Allah, is Gaia.” [4]

Genesis began with six clear statements of original blessing or inherent goodness (Genesis 1:10-31), and the words “original sin” are not in the New Testament. Yet the Church became so preoccupied with the fly in the ointment, the flaw in the beauty that we forgot and even missed out on any original blessing. We saw Jesus primarily as a problem-solver rather than as a revealer of the very heart and image of God (Colossians 1:15f). We must now rebuild on a foundation of original goodness, and not on a foundation of original curse or sin. We dug a pit so deep that most people and most theologies could not get back out of it. You must begin with yes. You cannot begin with no, or it is not a beginning at all. [5]

Catholicism champions the essential goodness of creation of course. The doctrine of OS is meant to explain how the reality known as evil can occur in the midst of an otherwise good world.

 

[grannymh]

Quick comments.

The possibility of evil was known
at that first moment when Adam was made a gardener. Genesis 2: 15-17 is an essential element in the original relationship between humanity and Divinity.

Adam and Eve started life with the same basic nature, body and soul, as ours. Genesis 1: 26-27 is clear on that point which (bet you cannot guess-- ) is an essential element in the original relationship between humanity and Divinity.

 

[fhansen]

I wonder why God made A&E in a state of original holiness and justice, knowing they would abuse his trust, then sending man kind on a journey to perfection. Why not just have had them start like us, beings made in God’s image, on a journey to discover goodness, rather than evil.

Well, I’m not sure if that isn’t the way He did make them in a sense, at least with room for more growth yet, IOW. The variable, the wildcard, was their wills, obviously, yet to be conformed to His, yet to be conformed to perfection, yet to be perfected, as this part was left in their own hands.

 

[grannymh]

This popped up in my emails today. Make of it what you will.

Thank you. I will.

This “e-mail message” reminds me of someone who made his money by selling a lot of horses with three legs.

 

[simpleas]

Well, I’m not sure if that isn’t the way He did make them in a sense, at least with room for more growth yet, IOW. The variable, the wildcard, was their wills, obviously, yet to be conformed to His, yet to be conformed to perfection, yet to be perfected, as this part was left in their own hands.

Ok, but if Adam and Eve had been divinized in glory with God as the CCC says,they would have, had they not sinned, their wills perfected, wouldn’t their children have still had the freewill to be obedient to God or not. If they had “made it” on their journey, we all would have been born of their perfected human nature, and been in glory with God, but does that mean we would never have wanted to “do our own thing, without God”?

I keep hearing that what makes us human is our freewill.

We are on that journey now, to seek God, Love God and neighbour, be in grace before God at death, hopefully see God and be resurrected in a perfect body.

Adam and Eve were given an relationship. I agree they needed to grow in that relationship in order to make the correct choice. But they did not need to grow in relation as we do, so that is where there is a signifiant difference, original holiness and justice was a gift from God to them, but is taken away from their children.

 

[fhansen]

Ok, but if Adam and Eve had been divinized in glory with God as the CCC says,they would have, had they not sinned, their wills perfected, wouldn’t their children have still had the freewill to be obedient to God or not. If they had “made it” on their journey, we all would have been born of their perfected human nature, and been in glory with God, but does that mean we would never have wanted to “do our own thing, without God”?

I keep hearing that what makes us human is our freewill.

We are on that journey now, to seek God, Love God and neighbour, be in grace before God at death, hopefully see God and be resurrected in a perfect body.

Adam and Eve were given an relationship. I agree they needed to grow in that relationship in order to make the correct choice. But they did not need to grow in relation as we do, so that is where there is a signifiant difference, original holiness and justice was a gift from God to them, but is taken away from their children.

OTOH we’re returned to a state of OH/OJ at Baptism. So I tend to think that they, along with us, *do *need to grow in some manner from the state they began in. It seems that God wants us to grow in justice, defined as growing in faith, hope, and love for Him, without the benefit of the Beatific Vision, which would then finally “lock” our wills in so to speak, our desire finally completely satisfied. By failing to trust God, Adam went the opposite direction and probably lost the justice of faith, not even having cultivated the virtue of hope as presumably he had little or no need for it yet, and not having cultivated the virtue of love, which would’ve completed his justice, not yet recognizing God’s true value.

 

[grannymh]

To begin.

The first thing to understand about Adam’s relationship with his Creator is that it is not a relationship between equals.

The second thing to understand about Adam’s relationship with his Creator is that Satan hated this relationship. Genesis 3: 1-5.

At the very beginning of Sacred Scripture, we are warned about Satan. What is interesting to me is that many posters consider Adam to be on the dumb side without positive qualities. Yet, no one, so far, has pictured Satan as an innocent creature without the knowledge of rotten evil who lives, like a happy wise serpent, in the land of perfection. Please take a look at the date for Pelagius in post 228.
From the e-mail message quoted in Post 228.
“Yet another gift of Native and Celtic spirituality is their unashamed welcome of some kind of “original blessing” instead of starting with a problem like “original sin.” Pelagius (354-418), one of the early Christian Celtic writers, opposed the doctrine of original sin coined by his contemporary Augustine. Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness. The Celts saw creation as good and as a theophany or revelation of God’s very being just as Genesis had taught.”

How did Satan describe the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Genesis 3: 6. How does the Catholic Church describe the same tree? CCC 396 and cross-references CCC 1730 and CCC 311.

Apparently, Catholicism “became so preoccupied with the fly in the ointment (reference to Original Sin in post 228, last paragraph) the flaw in the beauty that we forgot” – that the only solution for we moderns is to deny what the Original Sin did to the original relationship between humanity and Divinity.

Knock out Adam’s original relationship with his Creator God and the next step is to ignore the divinity of Jesus Christ. Last sentence of CCC 389.

I did not read the early books by Matthew Fox because their titles sounded silly. But it seems to me that Satan continues to ply his best tricks whenever he can.

 

[grannymh]

The second thing to understand about Adam’s relationship with his Creator is that Satan hated this relationship. Genesis 3: 1-5.

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From the e-mail message quoted in Post 228.
“Yet another gift of Native and Celtic spirituality is their unashamed welcome of some kind of “original blessing” instead of starting with a problem like “original sin.” Pelagius (354-418), one of the early Christian Celtic writers, opposed the doctrine of original sin coined by his contemporary Augustine. Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness. The Celts saw creation as good and as a theophany or revelation of God’s very being just as Genesis had taught.”

My question from post 235: How did Satan describe the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Genesis 3: 6?

Gentle readers,

My first and last thoughts about the original relationship between humanity and Divinity never once included Satan. It is useless to worry about how I missed that important element. I will do my best and depend on your patience as I sort out the Satan idea which popped into my head one morning when only one eye was opened.

Apparently, centuries later, this comment about Pelagius was the “blessing” I needed to get a grip on Satan in the Garden.
From the above quoted material.
“Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness.”

Reading the beginning of Genesis, chapter 3, we hear Satan, dismissing the negative of death. I think all of us, if we heard a talking snake, would be shocked into listening very, very carefully.

We often consider, correctly, that Genesis 3: 5 is the basic temptation to Adam. Instead, I recommended Genesis 3: 6, which is Eve explaining what she saw and how she interpreted the tree in a positive manner. My guess is that Satan winked at Eve and encouraged her to describe the positive tree as “good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom.” Like Pelagius later noted: “Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness.” “Gaining wisdom” is desirable in finding “wholeness.”

Please note.
There is nothing basically wrong with presenting the positive before the negative. TV ads for drugs do that all the time. Yet, if the serious side effects of the drug were omitted …
I am sure readers understand that this extremely serious omission would be like selling a horse with three great legs period. (post 232)

I have two more quotes to present. It is time to crack open a cold one.

The first part of the last paragraph in post 228 (recall that the poster invited comments. “Make of it what you will.”) is very blunt and took my breath away.
“Genesis began with six clear statements of original blessing or inherent goodness (Genesis 1:10-31), and the words “original sin” are not in the New Testament. Yet the Church became so preoccupied with the fly in the ointment, the flaw in the beauty that we forgot and even missed out on any original blessing.”
“fly in the ointment”

I may be the first to quote the following section of Humani Generis, Pius XII, 1950. It certainly addresses some current issues. It is a difficult section. The last line is a warning to us.

This is a good place to pause. All of us need some time to think about Satan at the beginning of human history and in the middle of our history. We simply cannot omit him from* both* the Garden *and *from some anti-Catholic opposition to basic Catholic truths flowing from the first three chapters of Genesis.
Humani Generis
11. Another danger is perceived which is all the more serious because it is more concealed beneath the mask of virtue. There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these advocate an “eirenism” according to which, by setting aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And as in former times some questioned whether the traditional apologetics of the Church did not constitute an obstacle rather than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are presumptive enough to question seriously whether theology and theological methods, such as with the approval of ecclesiastical authority are found in our schools, should not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the world among men of every culture and religious opinion.

1. Now if these only aimed at adapting ecclesiastical teaching and methods to modern conditions and requirements, through the introduction of some new explanations, there would be scarcely any reason for alarm. But some through enthusiasm for an imprudent “eirenism” seem to consider as an obstacle to the restoration of fraternal union, things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ and likewise on institutions founded by Him, or which are the defense and support of the integrity of the faith, and the removal of which would bring about the union of all, but only to their destruction.

 

[fhansen]

My question from post 235: How did Satan describe the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Genesis 3: 6?

Gentle readers,

My first and last thoughts about the original relationship between humanity and Divinity never once included Satan. It is useless to worry about how I missed that important element. I will do my best and depend on your patience as I sort out the Satan idea which popped into my head one morning when only one eye was opened.

Apparently, centuries later, this comment about Pelagius was the “blessing” I needed to get a grip on Satan in the Garden.
From the above quoted material.
“Pelagius saw that beginning with the negative–original sin–would damage rather than aid spiritual development. Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness.”

Reading the beginning of Genesis, chapter 3, we hear Satan, dismissing the negative of death. I think all of us, if we heard a talking snake, would be shocked into listening very, very carefully.

We often consider, correctly, that Genesis 3: 5 is the basic temptation to Adam. Instead, I recommended Genesis 3: 6, which is Eve explaining what she saw and how she interpreted the tree in a positive manner. My guess is that Satan winked at Eve and encouraged her to describe the positive tree as “good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom.” Like Pelagius later noted: “Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness.” “Gaining wisdom” is desirable in finding “wholeness.”

Please note.
There is nothing basically wrong with presenting the positive before the negative. TV ads for drugs do that all the time. Yet, if the serious side effects of the drug were omitted …
I am sure readers understand that this extremely serious omission would be like selling a horse with three great legs period. (post 232)

I have two more quotes to present. It is time to crack open a cold one.

The first part of the last paragraph in post 228 (recall that the poster invited comments. “Make of it what you will.”) is very blunt and took my breath away.
“Genesis began with six clear statements of original blessing or inherent goodness (Genesis 1:10-31), and the words “original sin” are not in the New Testament. Yet the Church became so preoccupied with the fly in the ointment, the flaw in the beauty that we forgot and even missed out on any original blessing.”
“fly in the ointment”

I may be the first to quote the following section of Humani Generis, Pius XII, 1950. It certainly addresses some current issues. It is a difficult section. The last line is a warning to us.

This is a good place to pause. All of us need some time to think about Satan at the beginning of human history and in the middle of our history. We simply cannot omit him from* both* the Garden *and *from some anti-Catholic opposition to basic Catholic truths flowing from the first three chapters of Genesis.
Humani Generis
11. Another danger is perceived which is all the more serious because it is more concealed beneath the mask of virtue. There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these advocate an “eirenism” according to which, by setting aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And as in former times some questioned whether the traditional apologetics of the Church did not constitute an obstacle rather than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are presumptive enough to question seriously whether theology and theological methods, such as with the approval of ecclesiastical authority are found in our schools, should not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the world among men of every culture and religious opinion.

1. Now if these only aimed at adapting ecclesiastical teaching and methods to modern conditions and requirements, through the introduction of some new explanations, there would be scarcely any reason for alarm. But some through enthusiasm for an imprudent “eirenism” seem to consider as an obstacle to the restoration of fraternal union, things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ and likewise on institutions founded by Him, or which are the defense and support of the integrity of the faith, and the removal of which would bring about the union of all, but only to their destruction.

I think, as with physical ailments, finding and recognizing the ‘negative’- the illness-is a critical step in becoming whole. But sometimes we’d rather not go to the doctor anyway for fear he or she might find something wrong. And in the case of our moral integrity or wholeness-our “rightness”-we’re particularly sensitive to any suggestion that something could be awry. It seems pride’s always lurking behind the scenes. And yet pride is our woundedness in a sense, always promising some kind of greater gain, focusing our attention on the wrong values while losing ground as we hope or aspire to be gaining it. The fruit can appear to be really, really, good.