How did The fall of Adam and Eve Happen?

[STT]

God can’t really stop a being with freewill from disobeying Him and sinning. Taking it literally, before the act of eating, Eve already accepted lies about God and desired to sin. Even if God stopped her from eating it, things were far gone. You can physically force someone to not murder another person, but they want to do it, and have already sinned. The angels/spirits sinned and fell without doing something physical.

Why did He created the tree of knowledge? Why did He allow the serpent/Satan deceive Adam and Eve? Why didn’t He forgive Adam and Eve?..

And angels chose not to be with God which this is a sin.

 

[STT]

Could God have, using his power, prevented this? Lewis touches on this too:
“It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin ever committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. A world thus continually underpropped and corrected by Divine interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice.”

What is wrong with God intervention? At the end, He has to intervene if He wants us in Heaven forever.

 

[SPBlitz]

This is a question that comes up a lot when discussing the problem of evil, and it is a fair one. If anyone else had the power to prevent an evil, and then declined to do so, we would rightly view that as evil. Wouldn’t the same apply to God? I think the problem lies in free will, which I know is the standard boilerplate for such things, but hear me out. Many atheists respond that if God is all powerful, he should be able to somehow come up with a way to prevent the evil while simultaneously leaving free will intact. Is this possible? Imagine the following scenario:

A man has a woman cornered in a dark alley, gun in hand. He intends to murder her. Now let’s say that God has the moral obligation to prevent this act, but he has to do so without interfering with free will. How could he do so? Make the bullet miss? By miracle, have the bullet not wound the woman? Make the gun malfunction? Let’s say that one of these happens. What would the gunman’s response be? Anger? Frustration? Both indicate that the gunman had every reason to believe that his actions would be successful, and is now surprised to find himself foiled. Now, if God has the obligation to prevent this occurrence of evil then he has an obligation to prevent every occurrence. Every time someone tries to harm someone else, or lie, or cheat, or what-have-you, something - either miracle or coincidence - will prevent the evil from happening. Don’t you think that humans would figure out pretty quickly that they aren’t actually able to act upon their choice? Then answer me this - how can you choose to do that which you know to be impossible?

 

[SPBlitz]

Perhaps, if Heaven was merely a state of physical happiness, in which case someone could be there, and enjoy it ‘against their will’ so to speak. But Heaven as defined by Christians is having your will freely conformed to God’s will. Therefore, it is intrinsically impossible for someone to be in Heaven against their will. Not even God can force someone’s will while simultaneously allowing it to be free.

 

[fhansen]

God intervenes but patiently, not forcefully; He seeks to draw us into the light, into alignment with His will. Because to the extent that we “own” right choices, we increase in our own worthiness, in our own perfection as it were. So we live in a world where man’s will reigns freely, controlled and restrained only by his own desires and choices or those of others. That’s true freedom., autonomy from God. Until we see the evil and fallacy of such total independence and begin to hunger and thirst for a righteousness that only He can accomplish in us. The experience-the knowledge-of evil that inevitably results from spiritual/moral separation from God can contribute a very valuable lesson-in coming to know just how much we need Him. “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

 

[Gorgias]

“Savior” can be taken different ways

Fine. Take it in a Christian context, then. After all, that’s the way that Christians are presenting the Scriptures. Therefore, the claim “no fall == no need for a savior” is pretty distinct and understandable as a particular claim.

As I am not a literalist, nor does the Church teach that literalism is the only way to go, thus even though the Church has its “official” teachings on many narratives doesn’t mean that there’s no wiggle room for other interpretations.

Fair enough. “Humans need Christ as their savior, due to sin” is one that doesn’t admit of wriggle room … unless you want to jump out of the “Christian” sandbox and work in a different context. I’m gonna go on a limb here and suggest that the sandbox we’re in, in this thread, is Christian.

Catholic theologians, for example, are “all over the map” when it comes to exactly what “original sin” is and its ramifications.

Agreed. Lucky for us, “Catholic theologians” don’t define doctrine; the magisterium does. And, the magisterial teachings on original sin are clear.

Even though chapter divisions were put into our Bibles much later than when they were written, the reality is that the Creation accounts continue on into and through the Fall.

What we describe as “Genesis chapter 3” is not a ‘creation’ account. Nothing is created. It’s the story of humanity’s fall from grace and expulsion from “the garden.”

You have a good question. Even us do our best to stop a crime when we know it is going to happen.

We haven’t given others the gift of free will, though. So, if we attempt to stop someone from actualizing a free will decision, there’s a different impact than if God made that attempt.

What is wrong with God intervention? At the end, He has to intervene if He wants us in Heaven forever.

Notice that this intervention still doesn’t force us; even when God “intervenes” through the Incarnation of Jesus, humans still have to choose to accept Him in order to attain to salvation. God builds the road: we have to decide to travel it.

 

[Vico]

Because now there is already sin in the world. It seems contradictory to God’s nature to not preserve the purity of creation before the original fall.

Still assuming that the beginning of Genesis is literal.

The issue of evil has absorbed many discussions. In general evil is described three ways, but only two are properly called evil.

1. moral evil
2. physical evil
3. metaphysical evil (not properly evil).

Catechism of the Catholic Church

324 The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.

Catholic Encyclopedia states:

With regard to the nature of evil, it should be observed that evil is of three kinds — physical, moral, and metaphysical.

By moral evil are understood the deviation of human volition from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation. Such action, when it proceeds solely from Ignorance is not to be classed as moral evil …

Physical evil includes all that causes harm to man, whether by bodily injury, by thwarting his natural desires, or by preventing the full development of his powers, either in the order of nature directly, or through the various social conditions under which mankind naturally exists.

Metaphysical evil is the limitation by one another of various component parts of the natural world. Through this mutual limitation natural objects are for the most part prevented from attaining to their full or ideal perfection …

And:

Christian philosophy has, like the Hebrew, uniformly attributed moral and physical evil to the action of created free will. Man has himself brought about the evil from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God, on obedience to which his happiness depended.

Sharpe, A. (1909). Evil. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm

 

[Metis1]

When we look at Church teachings, these are are often no where near as slam-dunk as they may appear. Two examples:

Nicene Creed: this took years to complete and was quite contentious even at its finish, especially since there was a compromise to bring those involved in Arianism aboard.

N.T. Canon: this took over 1/2 century, was quite contentious, and even after that there were disputes, especially over what we call the “Apocrypha”.

Joe Parishioner may accept them at the surface level, but if one really studies these events and many others, they will generally realize that these are not so simple.

Gotta go.

 

[Gorgias]

When we look at Church teachings, these are are often no where near as slam-dunk as they may appear.

Agreed. The process of deciding is “contentious”. However, the actual teachings themselves are clear, once promulgated.

 

[goout]

1. God is omnipresent and omniscient
2. God is infallible
3. Meaning God is morally infallible
4. God was all present and all knowing during the temptation of Adam of Eve
5. God is all powerful and therefore could have stopped it.
6. God did not stop it

Does this mean that God allowed the fall? Please explain.

You could also ask:
Why do human beings have children, knowing full well the child will suffer, probably reject them at times, and eventually die? Parents know this, yet they have children. Why?

And when they have children, they could protect them from suffering. Parents could use their power by locking them in the house. They will never catch someone else’s flu, and never have a car accident. Why don’t parents lock their children in the house?

 

[STT]

This is a question that comes up a lot when discussing the problem of evil, and it is a fair one. If anyone else had the power to prevent an evil, and then declined to do so, we would rightly view that as evil. Wouldn’t the same apply to God? I think the problem lies in free will, which I know is the standard boilerplate for such things, but hear me out. Many atheists respond that if God is all powerful, he should be able to somehow come up with a way to prevent the evil while simultaneously leaving free will intact. Is this possible? Imagine the following scenario:

A man has a woman cornered in a dark alley, gun in hand. He intends to murder her. Now let’s say that God has the moral obligation to prevent this act, but he has to do so without interfering with free will. How could he do so? Make the bullet miss? By miracle, have the bullet not wound the woman? Make the gun malfunction? Let’s say that one of these happens. What would the gunman’s response be? Anger? Frustration? Both indicate that the gunman had every reason to believe that his actions would be successful, and is now surprised to find himself foiled. Now, if God has the obligation to prevent this occurrence of evil then he has an obligation to prevent every occurrence. Every time someone tries to harm someone else, or lie, or cheat, or what-have-you, something - either miracle or coincidence - will prevent the evil from happening. Don’t you think that humans would figure out pretty quickly that they aren’t actually able to act upon their choice?

No. They for sure are able to act upon their decisions until they exist.

Then answer me this - how can you choose to do that which you know to be impossible?

You probably give up to do impossible act for a long time. Then peace will be everywhere.

 

[STT]

God intervenes but patiently, not forcefully; He seeks to draw us into the light, into alignment with His will. Because to the extent that we “own” right choices, we increase in our own worthiness, in our own perfection as it were. So we live in a world where man’s will reigns freely, controlled and restrained only by his own desires and choices or those of others. That’s true freedom., autonomy from God. Until we see the evil and fallacy of such total independence and begin to hunger and thirst for a righteousness that only He can accomplish in us. The experience-the knowledge -of evil that inevitably results from spiritual/moral separation from God can contribute a very valuable lesson-in coming to know just how much we need Him. “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Why Christian doesn’t follow the way of God, intervene but patiently and not forcefully? Do you think that laws in well developed countries are wrong?

 

[fhansen]

Some people prove themselves to be incorrigible regardless of the approach. We just have time to figure it out here-and choose rightly-to the extent that we’re willing. We’re judged based on how we invested our talents: on what we did with what we were given in terms of time, opportunity, revelation/knowledge, grace, background, aptitude, etc.

 

[SPBlitz]

No. They for sure are able to act upon their decisions until they exist.

Im not sure what you’re saying here. Could you rephrase?

You probably give up to do impossible act for a long time. Then peace will be everywhere.

Perhaps, but that comes at the cost of free will. God wants us to be made in his image, free will is an intrinsic part of that.

 

[EloyCraft]

I’m sorry. I mean if God prevented man from sinning we wouldn’t know what’s true about us. We would be living a lie. God doesn’t deceive so He created man even though man would sin.

 

[enoch1]

genesis is a myth. a snake was a god to the druids. the writers of genesis showed the snake as evil to early jews, to keep young people from following the beliefs of the religion of their captors… i don’t believe there was a fall of man.

 

[Pattylt]

Druids are from Gaul and Adam and Eve had no idea they existed.

However, Egypt did worship snakes so you you could change your argument to make better sense of the time period.

Just trying to be helpful!

 

[Metis1]

Good point, imo.

There’s always a danger in getting so much into individual “trees” so much that we may forget to take a step back and look at the “forest”. Jesus’ message really was and is quite simple, namely to “love one another as I have loved you”, thus the 613 Mosaic Commandments were narrowed down to Two: love of God and love of all of God’s creation that obviously includes our “neighbor”.

Unfortunately, many people forget how simple it really is as they argue individual “side-bars” and use one or more of them as being some sort of litmus test in order for one to be a “true Christian”/“true Catholic”. All too often, some slip into hostile debates on the likes of “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” as they forget the two basic Commandments that Jesus taught. Paul warned us to beware of those who cause division within the fold with their rancor and “my way or the highway approach”.

OK, that’s my “homily”-- for better or worse.

 

[fhansen]

Yes, legalism always looms as a human tendency while love is the real goal-and true fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:10). Love compels obedience by it’s nature, the right way. It’s the goal, what God wants from-and for-us. So the Church actually teaches, on our “particular judgement” quoting St John of the Cross:
"At the evening of life we shall be judged on our love."

 

[enoch1]

i was thinking of pagans,dont know why i said druids…you are right,it was the egyptians who worshiped snakes. i think catholic theologians saw this as the fall of man. humankind is always falling to me,lol but we pull ourselves up again, by the grace of God