The three-fold temptation as described in 1 John
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Gen. 3: 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
The temptation of Christ:
1 - hunger for food
2 - see the world as a kingdom of riches for the taking
3 - prideful show of power
Jesus shows us how to respond to the three-fold temptation:
**
1 - That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
2 - Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. ** **
3 - Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
The absurd twisted claim is found in your belief that God desired the temptation in the garden and Eve’s particular reaction to it. Followed by a very strange idea that God desired Adam to follow Eve in lust, avarice and pride, rather than listening to the Word of God, worshiping God alone, and obeying His Word. “Thou shalt not eat.”**
RebeccaJ,
You may or may not be aware that I will be delighted to have a go at challenging your point of view. Here goes (I really do think this is fun stuff):
In the first place, I never wrote that “God desired the temptation in the garden and Eve’s particular reaction to it.” And I certainly didn’t write that “God desired Adam to follow Eve in lust, avarice and pride.”
When God grants freedom of choice to humankind, He does so in a loving way, without any force whatsoever–not implied force, not making everyone feel like a fool who doesn’t agree with what God has commanded as ultimately for their blessing. He really did give Adam and Eve freedom of choice, but they were also in a state of complete innocence and lack of knowledge of the concepts of “good” versus “evil.” All they knew is they had a lot of food around them and there was a tree with fruit they had been commanded not to eat, or they would die in the “day” they partook of that fruit.
Gen. 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
I have no idea why you think something that looks “good to eat” is fulfilling the “lust of the flesh.” Do you only eat food that looks “bad to eat?”
When the Savior was fasting and Satan thought up the ways he thought he could tempt Him, of course he used food as a temptation for someone who had just fasted for forty days–although it shows a rather poor understanding of the strength of spirit and strength of willpower that Christ had. All I really think Satan was trying to do was to try and get Christ to doubt His divinity just for a second of time, so I suppose he appealed to His appetite at that moment, which was easily refuted by Christ. In the process, Christ taught us all about not “living by bread alone”, and made the comparison that He made many times thereafter between the “bread of life”–the living bread–and the word of God. But Christ certainly didn’t say we shouldn’t eat or that we shouldn’t make food “look good to eat.” Are Catholics afraid of the culinary arts?
The citing of 1 John 2 is a very good choice of a set of scriptural teachings. John wrote in verse 2, “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Adam and Eve were part of the “whole world”, so their sins were covered by the atonement, by that propitiation for “the sins of the whole world.”
I disagree that the “lust of the eyes” equates to “pleasant to the eyes”. Again, are you saying Eve couldn’t think a fruit looked “pleasant” to eat? Are you saying that all Catholic food is dull and boring, so that it won’t be “pleasant” to the eyes? (I’ve eaten with some Catholics before–they certainly didn’t show some need to have their food look dull and boring and unpleasant. It looked good to eat to me. In your mind does that mean I was sinning–because the food actually looked good to eat? Or were they sinning by making it look good to eat?)
Are you saying that by Eve desiring “wisdom” she was being “prideful”? Does this mean anyone who desires wisdom in life is being “prideful”? Was Solomon being “prideful” when he desired wisdom? Was Paul being prideful and teaching the early members of the church to be “prideful” when he taught them to “be wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil”? (I do think a very good point can be made about the kind of wisdom a person should seek in life, as differentiated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1-2.)
If you’re saying that Eve should have been totally content with her circumstances, and not found within herself a yearning for more experience and greater knowledge and wisdom and insights through living a life where she could find growth and development rather than “no changes at all”–just living day to day in a lovely place with easily found food but with absolutely no challenges and no sense of growth or development–then I think such a belief short-changes womanhood and short-changes the very sense of inquisitiveness and responsiveness to the challenges of life that has led to so many inventions in the world and so much exploration and fascination with so much to learn.
I challenge you to come up with a better source of the idea that Adam had the sin of pride, for the verses you cited simply did not do that at all. They weren’t talking about Adam or Eve, and they certainly weren’t talking about not seeking knowledge and wisdom to help the world be a better place in which to live and help others.
