What did Adam and Eve gain from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if not reason? Self determination?
The sin is pride.Gorgias:
What did Adam and Eve gain from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if not reason? Self determination?
When God said, they are now like us and must banish them from Eden to prevent them from eating of the tree of life and living forever. What did they gain to be more like God?
Yes, in order to make the wisest choice, they would have to have known that their behavior would harm their own children, which was what God in the story was planning to do.
Yes, this was a diversion from my question, and did not answer it at all. I did not ask why what they did counted as a sin under a rubric.
People avoid all mortal sin through the development of conscience, which is in part informed by experience. People have also very naturally have developed a tendency to question authority, which frustrates leadership, but is a very natural part of human development. Unquestioned (human) authority has the ability to make laws that are corrupt, and humanity has developed a built-in resistance to this. It is God-given, because it increases, not decreases, our ability to survive as a species. Man scrutinizes the given laws for their validity, their basis. In the story, God provided the basis, which was “you’re gonna die if you eat this”, but the young couple doubted it, because it looked so good, They questioned the basis, and doubted its validity. People are made this way.
I agree that all of us can relate to a “fall”. All of us have experienced times where we have let ourselves down and/or let down the loving people around us. However, if the “fall” means that there is some aspect of humanity that is bad in some way, that is not where my own journey, my own relation with the Father has taken me. We are all born lacking wisdom, but such lack is not a negative, it is neutral, an unknown void into which creation itself develops and reveals.
, our conversation ended with my last post to you (#404), were you going to answer it?The Devil is a creature and spirtual being, also referred to as a fallen angel who want to take the place of God. he has an evil power and is the cause of the sin of humanity.
For me it shows God’s omniscience and how Adam and Eve who before the fall were more complete beings than our current humanity.
Would you mind quoting the statement you’re citing, here? (Or, did you mean that Francis’ statement on “not receiving salvation” is the closest he comes to discussing the matter?) Thanks!
Nothing they already didn’t have. If anything, I’d say that they gained the experience of disobeying God and the experience of trying to make up moral rules themselves. It wasn’t a good experience.
So, first of all, I’d point out that the catechism teaches that this story is written in “figurative language”. That means that, although there really was a first sin of our first human parents, it didn’t happen precisely in the way that the story in Genesis chapter three unfolds. I would interpret the line you paraphrase not as an admission that God is powerless before the whims of humans, but rather, simply that man refused God’s gifts – including immortality – and therefore, God took these gifts back. There would be no more ‘immortality’ (i.e., one of the preternatural gifts) for humanity. There would be no more ‘garden’ – now mankind would have to toil to produce food.
Do you have “all the information of the consequences of your actions”? If not – and if you believe that God is omnibenevolent – then why do you rail at the suggestion that He didn’t give this facility to Adam and Eve?
This one is on Eve’s shoulders, not the devil’s.
Remember that it’s just a story, meant to teach a lesson, not a treatise on the characteristics of God.
Yes, I agree with you, the proper way to read the fall is through a figurative manner. And I have said many time we cannot reduce it to what Eve was thinking and doing in the context.
Adam, Eve and The Devil all share in the consequences of the first sin. I would say that without the Devil the act would not have naturally occured within the couple.
I respect this viewpoint, this spirituality, as a manifestation of our good nature. I once shared this view, but when I came to seeing that all comes from God (and that evil human acts are a product of human lack of awareness), I came to see the complete beauty of all that is within. This has to be worked through by the individual.
The problem is omniscience without benevolence. If God is omniscient, which is how I know Him, then God planned to make two people lacking in complete wisdom to make a reasonable choice, and planned to test them with a choice, and planned to take away a gift He had given them as punishment for making the very choice He knew that they would make. In addition, he punishes them even worse than what he said he would, by harming their children.
Actually yes
The Devil was the tempter not the actor.
Pope Francis Verified account @ Pontifex
No, of course I do not have “all the information”. I am not railing at the suggestion that He didn’t give this facility to Adam and Eve, what I am railing at is the idea that an omniscient, omnipotent, loving Father would present his adored humans with a choice that would harm their children, but not give them such information (as well as other information that would have made their choice much more “reasonable”). The story is a hit on His benevolence.
You would do this to your own children? Why?
an omniscient and benevolent (very hard to spell these words) God does not demmand complete control of his own creation. God knows the outcome even if what seems to human understanding chaos and mistretment.
Except that the author’s telling of the story literally does include what Eve was thinking! So, at least on the level of what the inspired author was attempting to present to us, we have her internal thoughts laid bare to us!
Umm… what are the consequences for the devil? That humanity would be in opposition to him? (That was already the case when A&E were in God’s graces, wasn’t it?)
The Church is careful, I think, not to make that statement. The implications of that position are that it waters down the impact of the free will decision of our first human parents, and turns them into “victims” rather than “willing moral agents.” That might be a popular approach today… but that’s not reasonable, I don’t think.
to crawl on his belly and eat dirt for the rest of his days
but that is how it reads, it’s like taking the wolf out of little red riding hood.