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STT
Guest
They haven’t yet eaten the fruit so they couldn’t possibly know what is wrong or evil. You cannot use wrong instead of evil to resolve the problem. They are same.
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Wesrock
Guest
I already explained what knowledge of good and evil was in my first post, and you haven’t addressed it.
“First hand experience.” They knew that disobeying God was evil. They had just never been sin sin before and lacked that intimate, personal knowing of It.
“First hand experience.” They knew that disobeying God was evil. They had just never been sin sin before and lacked that intimate, personal knowing of It.
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STT
Guest
I cannot find where do you explain the knowledge of good and evil.
How they could know that disobeying God was evil when they didn’t know what evil is? They knew they would die only.
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STT
Guest
Can you repeat your interpretation again. I cannot understand why that objection does not apply to your understanding of the passage?
Do you believe that story is a myth? Perhaps that is my problem in not understanding your interpretation.
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Wesrock
Guest
It’s a historical event told using a mythological style. There was not a literal tree or fruit. The eating of the fruit is symbolic of an act of disobedience which went unrepented. Man had reason and the ability to know what actions were good and what were evil. However, he had no first hand experience of committing evil, of being in sin, of being at disunion with God. His disobedience was how he came into into intimate knowledge of that state of being.
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Wesrock
Guest
This will no doubt muddy the waters, but as an alternative explanation (separate from what I posted before), let’s assume had no ability to distinguish good and evil before eating the fruit but had that ability immediately after. They would have been too ignorant to know it was evil to eat the fruit, but when God inquired about it later they would have had the knowledge to repent, to know it was evil to try to blame others. It was only after this that punishments were assigned.
But that Adam and Eve were in this way ignorant is not Church teaching.
Catechism of the Catholic Church:
397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.
But that Adam and Eve were in this way ignorant is not Church teaching.
Catechism of the Catholic Church:
397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.
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esieffe
Guest
Umm, when there is a voice that comes out of no where, and it is understood that this is God, your God speaking, and this God, your God tells you, who are infinitely less intelligent than him, you, who were made out of clay, not to do something, you don’t do it.
When something slithers up with fangs and tells you that it is ok to do the very one thing you were explicitly told not to do, by this God, your God, you don’t do it. You don’t get into the car with this stranger. You don’t take the candy. This is just common sense.God, who gave you this wonderful place to live, Eden, where there is no crime, no toil no rules, save one, you listen. You dance with the one who brought you.
It really is that simple. Sure. You can go out and dump all of this intellectual knowledge over the whole argument. You can run with the philosophers and apply all of these lofty ideas and sometimes, the next thing you know, you are having this very same conversation with something with fangs.
When something slithers up with fangs and tells you that it is ok to do the very one thing you were explicitly told not to do, by this God, your God, you don’t do it. You don’t get into the car with this stranger. You don’t take the candy. This is just common sense.God, who gave you this wonderful place to live, Eden, where there is no crime, no toil no rules, save one, you listen. You dance with the one who brought you.
It really is that simple. Sure. You can go out and dump all of this intellectual knowledge over the whole argument. You can run with the philosophers and apply all of these lofty ideas and sometimes, the next thing you know, you are having this very same conversation with something with fangs.
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Mike_from_NJ
Guest
Supposedly Adam and Eve had no idea that they were naked, had never before encountered deception or guile, yet were somehow supposed to be aware of “stranger danger”. While what you describe is in a way common sense, there is a better term for it: savvy. Why do we ingrain it into our kids to not take candy from strangers or take rides from them? Because they are not born with the savvy that there are people that want to hurt them. Most glaring of all we don’t punish children who fall victim to another’s machinations, especially when it’s all new to them.
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esieffe
Guest
Okay I will give you the stranger danger reference, but still they were told not to eat from the tree or “you will surely die.”
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Wesrock
Guest
They had no shame and nothing to hide before they sinned. They suddenly felt spiritually naked, exposed, and ashamed of themselves.
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Thomas_White
Guest
This is my understanding:
God is certainly not opposed to reason. What God prohibited in the Garden of Eden was eating from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, which is to say a prohibition against Adam and Eve’s gaining the knowledge to decide for themselves what was good and what was evil. This was also the sin of the fallen angels, for this knowledge is God’s providence. It involves man’s embracing of a subjective and relative ethics, and it also involves pride, the greatest sin of all.
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STT
Guest
Why did God give us intellect if we are supposed to always do what He says? What is the point of having wisdom, the fruit of experiences, if we are supposed to follow a normal routine? God doesn’t do vain.
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RCinMT
Guest
We were made in His image and likeness, endowed with free will and reasoning ability.
Because we are endowed with free will and reason and given God’s laws, we need the ability to use our reasoning based on our own experiences as well as observation of other’s experiences to make the choice to follow God’s laws.
As a parent, I would be extremely gratified if my children blindly accepted my ethical teachings but used their God given intellect and reasoning to become great doctors, scientists, writers or whatever have you. However, they will at points have to use their reasoning when faced with moral and ethical choices in the course of their work, never mind outside of it.
Without reason and intellect we would not be images of God; we could not have dominion over the earth and animals; we would not have the ability to search for God through science, prayer, etc. In other words, without free will and reasoning there would have been no point for mankind.
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tonyrey
Guest
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tonyrey
Guest
There’s no such thing as “a normal routine”! No one is ever in precisely the same circumstances every moment of the day, every day, every week, every month and every year. Nor does everyone have precisely the same talents, abilities, opportunities, responsibilities and obligations. There is an incredible amount of richness and variety in even the apparently most ordinary life given the power of our intelligence and imagination. Even apparently doing nothing gives scope for individuality and creativity. The devil may find work for idle hands but God offers far more…
Negativity leads nowhere… There’s no such thing as “a normal routine”. No one is ever in precisely the same circumstances as others every moment of the day, every day, every week, every month and every year. Nor does everyone have precisely the same talents, abilities, opportunities, responsibilities and obligations. There is an incredible amount of richness and variety in even the apparently most ordinary life given the power of our intelligence and imagination. Even apparently doing nothing gives scope for individuality and creativity. The devil may find work for idle hands but God offers far more…
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Vic_Taltrees_UK
Guest
If I was a diver (which I’m not) I could see the top of the sea, or the middle of the sea, or the bottom of the sea, at different times. Now imagine an octopus with an eye so big that it can see all depths simultaneously in one glance.
So God isn’t promoting relativism, exactly. Indeed He wants us to think more, in order to “fathom” how the infinite layers of reality mesh with the limits on our viewpoint at any one time.
I think the kind of pride that He wants to steer us away from, is saying we have got it all sussed when we’re only on the way, and to conclude from that that we may run roughshod over others.
(By “got it all sussed” I meant dictating to others their rights and wrongs, their boundaries, their scope for initiative, instead of seeking objective measures.)
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Vic_Taltrees_UK
Guest
It is intended as a bullet point, a visual aid, an aide-memoire on which to hang the meaning.
Mankind couldn’t remember further back than the event after which Adam and Eve were identified. Therefore all issues in life were described in terms of what appeared on earth after that time.
Allegory has always been a common device in literature.
(Events in the reappearance of the earth’s surface after that event - the “creation narrative” - are probably concrete as well as allegorical.)
The word “myth” already had two different meanings from classical Greek times onwards. Already in that time one of the senses was “something not credit worthy” and this is the sense the Pontifical Commission picks up on in 1909.
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