The temptation in the desert: Could Jesus have sinned?

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God cannot sin against Him self, because He has no higher authority to answer too…
 
zro_x said:
If that’s how you want to describe moral perfection, fine. But that means that Adam and Eve, who were attracted to sin, were not morally perfect.
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I can’t imagine that anyone who understands the story of the Garden of Eden could conclude otherwise.
it also means that Mary was essentially created morally perfect. not by any choice of her own.
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Is there a possibility for some other way to be created morally perfect? I find your comment above peculiar, as if you are positing that someone could be “created morally perfect” by one’s own choice? :confused:
 
PRmerger said:
I can’t imagine that anyone who understands the story of the Garden of Eden could conclude otherwise.
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That seems to contradict what you say here:
He created us with perfect natures…but then it was ruined by the Original Sin.
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but assuming that even Adam and Eve were not created with perfect natures, we then have to ask why they weren’t.
Is there a possibility for some other way to be created morally perfect? I find your comment above peculiar, as if you are positing that someone could be “created morally perfect” by one’s own choice? :confused:
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Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to say! Moral perfection by this standard would not be something we choose, but rather a quality of our created selves that we have no control over. That goes against everything I’ve ever heard about the nature of moral perfection, free will, and love. It just doesn’t make any sense. Moral perfection is supposed to be a personal choice, not an endowed gift that God gives to some people and not others. Love doesn’t work like that. That’s why I think that Jesus and certainly Mary were every bit as attracted to sin as we are, at least to some sins at some times. I think that both were truly tempted, in the sense we usually associate with the word.
 
zro_x said:
When Jesus was being tempted by the devil in the desert, did he actually feel the desire to sin? If not, in what sense was Jesus tempted?

a related question:

*Could * Jesus have sinned, if he wanted to? If not, does that mean Jesus had no free will?

and if Jesus had sinned, what would be the consequences?
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Because Jesus is perfect he probably would have been more tempted

God bless
 
zro_x said:
but assuming that even Adam and Eve were not created with perfect natures, we then have to ask why they weren’t.
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They were created with perfect natures, but they chose to disregard this in favor of disobedience.
Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to say! Moral perfection by this standard would not be something we choose, but rather a quality of our created selves that we have no control over.
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No. That is not what Mary manifested. It was a quality that she had control over: she chose never to sin.
Moral perfection is supposed to be a personal choice, not an endowed gift that God gives to some people and not others.
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Right. And we are all capable of this, but instead, most of us choose to sin.
Love doesn’t work like that.
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Huh? :confused:
 
PRmerger said:
They were created with perfect natures, but they chose to disregard this in favor of disobedience.

No. That is not what Mary manifested. It was a quality that she had control over: she chose never to sin.

Right. And we are all capable of this, but instead, most of us choose to sin.

Huh? :confused:
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I was merely referring to the fact that a loving God can not make us morally perfect. We ourselves have to choose whether or not to accept moral perfection. Moral perfection ought to be determined by choice, not by temptation. Yet the way you are suggesting we look at humanity gives us the opposite view. Sure, Mary never sinned, but, according to the idea you are currently putting forward, she was also never tempted. The person who isn’t tempted will inevitably also be free from sin. And whether or not we are attracted to sin isn’t our choice. It boils down to the way God made us. If whether or not we are attracted to sin determines whether we will sin (and so far in human history, it has), then our own moral perfection isn’t up to us. It is ultimately up to God. I have a hard time believing that this is the nature of moral perfection.

another way to look at it: is the morally perfect person the one who fights through his temptation to do good? Or is the morally perfect person the one who has no temptation at all? it can’t be both, because there is only one human standard of perfection. If there were differences in how Adam and Eve and Jesus and Mary were attracted to sin, then one pair of them was morally perfect while the other was not. One pair had a special advantage or extra gift from God that made them more morally perfect than the other. So either Adam and Eve weren’t created morally perfect even before original sin, or Jesus and Mary did not have the same capacity for moral perfection as Adam and Eve did because of Adam and Eve’s ability to come to God even through temptations. One or the other. I have a hard time believing that God would do either of these.
 
Ion said:
Inclination or attraction to sin is the result of the original sin.
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That would mean that Adam and Eve would not have been tempted by the serpent, since there was no original sin at that time.
 
zro_x said:
That would mean that Adam and Eve would not have been tempted by the serpent, since there was no original sin at that time.
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From the provided link:
“Temptation is here taken to be an incitement to sin whether by persuasion or by the offer of some good or pleasure.”
 
Ion said:
From the provided link:
“Temptation is here taken to be an incitement to sin whether by persuasion or by the offer of some good or pleasure.”
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I see. So, just to be clear, you believe that Adam and Eve were incited, but not attracted, to sin in the garden?
 
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