What exactly is the knowledge of good and evil?

[friardchips]

Oh hey again friardchips!

Howdy there!

Ok problem here, if we say that Satan’s dominion is only possible by the actual permission of God, are we not saying here that Satan was given permission to Murder?

I would put it that the dominion of satan is necessary out of mercy to those whom he hates and justice for his action to rebel. These are consequences (my opinion only so please don’t quote me on it) of having been given a ‘choice’ to love the Creator freely yet choosing otherwise.

So you see, at some points, we see Satan as an actual enemy of God, instigating Evil in the world. He seems to be actively, intelligently, coming up with a plan, against God. Isn’t this the reason Jesus Christ had to become incarnate, to defeat the works of Satan.

Yup. And death itself, which acting upon his temptation, brought. This is why people are wrong when they say they don’t need to believe in satan to understand the redemptive sacrifice of our Lord.

But why must he have become incarnate, if God is the one who sets the limits on Satan? It seems as if God chose to become incarnate, so as to defeat Satan. Why do you need to defeat someone who is under your dominion?

I believe the angels live according to their dispositions and state in existence. Another poster here, said that it is not so much that our Creator defeats satan, than it is satan continually rebels against the Creator. The Creator being the Creator cannot be defeated. He has already Spoken. There is no stopping Eternal Love. satan was beaten when he fell. He beat himself. Love inverted. The ongoing issue was the he went onto take, not only angels with him, but humans too. Adam and Eve’s Fall brought about a darkening of the higher faculties. Our Lord being born, living among us and showing us how to serve Him and one another - although ultimately it is He who IS giving everything - and dying for us, and resurrecting, has bought with His Blood, our souls back from death. One could call this an awakening in the soul. Grace delivers us evermore back to that sanctified state of grace. A meeting place between the soul and her Creator. He died at our hands to show us there is nothing He can’t forgive if we are sorry. This absolute mercy heals the hard-heartedness of pride, a pride and vain-glory, that is but a spot of that which the devil posed against the Creator that caused him to fall from the Heavens. And mercy heals the ignorance, darkness and disposition for the flesh, that the Fall of Adam and Eve brought with it.

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[friardchips]

So the whole faith, and reality we currently live in and are experiencing, is actually due to this angel we now call Satan.

It is not because of him alone. He was given a choice of great magnitude. And Adam and Eve were given a choice that they themselves had control over which is called ‘free will’.

Satan tempted, and obviously this didn’t help, but Adam and Eve were responsible for their own actions. They sided with the devil. He didn’t actively force them. They still chose to go against what they’d been asked not to do.

If we can’t get a clear understanding of the one who got us here in the first place, and how this one actually operates, and why it was required that Jesus Christ must become incarnate to defeat him, it makes it much harder to believe. Also, we do not know actually how Jesus Christ defeated him, there are many theories (penal sub, ransom etc), this is another thing that bothers me, surely we should know how he was defeated. But now when I look at the patchy data we have on Satan, it doesn’t surprise me why it is unclear how exactly Jesus defeated him.

He defeated satan because He won us by means that no one could have foreseen. Even the prophets would not have known the King would be born and murdered as they were expecting a king like King David. He won us back from the grips of death. To live with Original Sin meant that concupiscence is a heavy weight. The Jews had the Creator in their midst. Our Lord showed us and delivered Himself to us and then IN us. His Holy Spirit guiding us in our hearts. The Sacraments, the Church, Our Lady, the saints and prayers, are all gifts that help to set us free from the slavery of sin. This is not something that satan is happy about but there is little he can do in the long-run because for him it is the case of waiting until his time DOES end and so he wishes to take as many souls as possible. When time ends, the consequences of his initial decision to fall, is completed. He wants to establish awareness of himself via behaviour which he tempts people to but Love conquers all fear and ignorance that would be weak enough to listen to him and follow up with evil acts that are an abuse of the free will we have been gifted with.

As is clear from the page also, we have no idea what the first sin of Satan was, seems like Pride is what has been settled on. However it really makes no sense to me how an Angel created, ‘Good’ could actually have the potential in him to choose anything but God/Love. We say they were given free will, but why, or even how could a spiritual being created inherently Good, choose to a lesser Good than the Greatest good, unless the potential to choose this evil, were not all ready a potential in him.

He was a beautiful angel, the most radiant, but wanted to be as great as the one who gave him all he was and so the sin was pride.

In regards to how an angel could choose rebellion when having been in the presence of the Creator in such an amazing way, I don’t know just as you don’t. If we could understand the nature of his fall from Heaven then it would be less surprising that such a decision could decide one’s entire fate. Every time we sin while being in knowledge that the Creator IS, we commit a sin that has the same consequences, and so are aligning ourselves with the devil.

Also as is pointed out on the page, the angels are extremely intelligent, it seems to me that choosing anything less than God Himself, is an extremely stupid choice to make.

Yes. But remember that humans are capable of great evil and much depends on their situation in life although this doesn’t excuse us from mortal sins unless we say sorry. It is better, as another poster was repeatedly saying: “Do not judge”. Just “work out yor own salvation.”

And this decision that seems to make no sense, essentially petters down to the created realm, where Satan (who has now fallen) is still for some reason, allowed to mess around and cause mayhem, and essentially bring upon us the very situation we have now, with all the evil and all.

He can only tempt. But can tempt to a degree of possession. We choose to listen, or not. His situation is in place according to his status as a fallen angel. Because we listened to Him in the first place, I suppose he has to be allowed for in his actions by the Creator, so that we always have that same choice as Adam and Eve - to choose evil or to choose Salvation. In this way we participate in our Creator’s salvific work by freely choosing the Creator instead of abuses of free will.

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[friardchips]

Regarding Eve, we could say that until the moment she was told by Satan, that the fruit was fine to eat, she was obedient to God. Now along comes a spiritual being who essentially is evil in his nature, as he has turned away from God, comes to Eve, who at this point apparently doesn’t even know what evil is, and says you can eat from this tree, and it will make you like God knowing good and evil.

So, well this makes absolutely no sense, that is if we are saying she literally did not know what good, and evil was. In a sense, she didn’t know A) who God was, being perfect goodness…

and she had no idea she was speaking to an evil being. Again she was tempted by evil, yet did not know evil. I would still consider her state blameless, she did not know literally, that what she was about to do was evil, or would result in evil.

Her state was not blameless because she knew it was wrong to eat from the Tree.

satan tempts in many ways and these temptations are often in the form of guile. He gets us to question our conscience, to excuse being disobedient and to therefore justify evil.

However, it is understood (I think) that when our Lord “descended into Hell”, some of the people He rescued from death - the consequence of the Fall - were Adam and Eve. Maybe because they didn’t have the option of saying sorry initially. The weight of their actions meant they were to wait for Him until He went and got them.

The point here, is that we can all be Adam and Eve. If we look back we can often see how their story relates a lot to our own lives. The other point, is that we are not expected to justify our own evil actions. We can “not judge other souls” by their sins but we are entitled to judge evil actions for what these actions represent and what people, and we, represent when committing them - ingratitude towards our Creator - and rather than wanting to excuse all we do as okay, instead we humbly put our trust - opposite to Pride that seeks steal for self-gain - in our Creator, and He shows us, by Divine Wisdom, the very gift of Himself. Then we can feast on the fruit that is good for us.

 

[OneSheep]

This doesn’t make sense, in order to make an informed decision, they would have had to have known what good is. As you said yourself: "Do this because this is good for you and don’t do this because it is not"

They had no knowledge of what Good was. That’s not what God said though he said, you will surely die. But this still means, that Adam and Eve would have had to have had knowledge of what death actually was. But death, is the result of sin, of choosing evil, so they could not know what death actually was, or meant, since they had no understanding of evil in the first place.

Still though, from a plain reading of the Garden, it begs an awful lot of questions, especially if we say Adam and Eve, literally did not know what Good and Evil was.

Hi Sephero,

I don’t know if you read any of my posts, but hopefully they make more sense of it?

The way that the blame of Adam and Eve is “maintained” (after all, anything bad that happens to us, Has to be our fault) is that the two had a “preternatural” nature, with an informed conscience and no concupiscence (strong desire). These characteristics start to fall apart when scrutinized, but they help maintain the general sentiment of blaming humanity for its own ills.

Lot of problems here.

I think that if the tree simply stood for Knowledge, things would be much easier. Adam and Eve knew Good and Evil, but didn’t have their own knowledge of it, only the knowledge imputed to them by God, which should be sufficient in itself. However, they were tempted by Satan to try and head out on their own, to gather knowledge of Reality on their own, to decide for themselves what they might make of Good and Evil. To take a reality upon themselves, to govern themselves etc.

In the eastern traditions, Maya (which we could say they ascribe to the ‘fallen’, essentially illusory reality, (since God alone is the Real) of this world), can mean to measure, and if we look at how we have gained our knowledge, it is all to do with measuring, quantifying, dividing, etc. So perhaps the tree of Knowledge had to be followed by a fall away from wholeness (Spiritual death), and a Reality given to us that we would experience and use this ‘Knowledge’ for a time. But it is this Knowledge, that is keeping us from experiencing the Truth, as we continue to measure, and quantify, we build ourselves a prison, and come up with theories of Modern Science, to give us our understanding, and view on Reality, which is a completely false one.

I have yet to ponder, along these lines, how the bodily sacrifice, in Jesus Christ, restores us with the Truth, and God. Perhaps its a realignment to the correct vision of Reality, not one that is quantifiable, and a ‘Big Bang Theory’, but one that is alive, and mysterious, and one that ends in a utterly inconceivably beautiful way. That True Life is not random molecules bumping into each other, but is actually in the body, in the breath, in the vision of the Heart, in Love.

CCC399: 399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.

So the consequence of the Fall is that people came to fear God, and conceived a distorted image, and Christ shows the real image. In order for the most banished, downcast, and oppressed to relate to Him, it had to end in such a violent manner. Yet He forgave, from the cross, the unrepentant.

I had to look up “Advaita”. If we are talking about religions that are openly dualistic, then you have Zoroastrianism, and perhaps others. Dualism is a way of seeing the world, but it is does not need to be taught, as the conscience itself divides each of us (internally) into good and evil. One will say, for example, one’s desire for status, lots of material wealth, power, sexual desire, autonomy, anything else that one resents about one’s nature, is “bad” and everything else is good. If I see my “inside” as dualistic, I will see my “outside” the same way. For that reason, all religions will have some good/evil dualism in them, because the cosmic view is essentially “organic”.

So, there is no use really trying to make sense out of dualism. It does not hold up when scrutinized, and one can’t talk a person out of dualism, not that you were trying, of course. In order to attain non-dualism (of the good/evil dualism), one must reconcile with everything within and without, all of the “enemies”, and come to see that they come from a single source.

Is that better? Or worse?

 

[Sephero]

Hey Friardchips, thanks for your reply. I think I kind of see the whole thing with a little more light. But lets try slow it down a bit.

The first thing is this thing with Satan, and the second with Eve. They are both intimately linked.

Lets just slowly try discuss Satan first.

The way we are thought to see the Devil in Christianity is that he is warring with His angels against God and His Holy angels.

Now I can’t understand how much of this is a battle, when Satan, has to first go in front of God, and ask his permission to do this particular attack.

Have I got this much wrong?

Just to bring OneSheep into this I will bring in Eve now as well, all though I would like to treat Satan, and Eve separately and slowly.

Hi there OneSheep.

You say that they had and ‘informed conscience’, but doesn’t this mean they all ready knew what right and wrong was? As in Good and Evil?

 

[friardchips]

Hey Friardchips, thanks for your reply. I think I kind of see the whole thing with a little more light. But lets try slow it down a bit.

The first thing is this thing with Satan, and the second with Eve. They are both intimately linked.

Lets just slowly try discuss Satan first.

The way we are thought to see the Devil in Christianity is that he is warring with His angels against God and His Holy angels.

Now I can’t understand how much of this is a battle, when Satan, has to first go in front of God, and ask his permission to do this particular attack.

Have I got this much wrong?

I don’t think it is wrong to ask questions and want to learn. Let’s split this into categories:

Satan before his fall from Heaven: at this time, humanity did not exist. satan was a radiant and knowledgeable Angel. When he fell, due to pride, the battle that ensued was not with swords, but he fell to the figurative sword, which is the Sword of Truth - that is depicted in images of St. Michael in which he holds this Sword (sometimes images depict a spear). satan tried to persuade other angels that they too could claim the Creator’s Glory for their own (so far as I’m aware). So the battle that ensued was a battle of faith and reason. Some Angels fell with satan and some Angels stayed true in trust of the Creator. Of course satan fell, because the Creator is perfect exalted Reason (excuse my poor way of explaining but you get the picture) - He cannot be unreasoned. Our Lord, in the gospel accounts, says that satan “was a murderer from the beginning”. I would guess that He was referring to the fact that not only did satan fall himself but he took other Angels with him who fell to the same fate.

Satan, after the fall from Heaven, tempted Adam and Eve when they were created. Now the Creator had already told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But satan tempted them and so they did this. But they had already been given the choice. IMO, satan was doing what satan was allowed to do, with as much free will as his position as a fallen angel allowed him.

Then in Scripture, we have Job, and the devil tempting Job, but Job is known to be a story archetype rather than this being an actual true story. Satan here is depicted as asking the Creator permission. This might only be the writer’s idea of satan’s restrictions (though the story is still divinely inspired and he knows satan exists from having written about him) or it could be that satan in some circumstances does really have to ask permission to overstep his freedom as a fallen angel, because…

…when our Lord was tempted in the desert, this can be understood as our Lord allowing satan to tempt Him. This would be akin to satan asking permission. And in the Garden of Gethsemane, He tells the apostles who are with Him to "pray not to be put to the test." St. Peter, later on in Acts (I think) says that “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion” waiting for someone to devour.

We can gauge from all this that since the fall of satan, he has a certain freedom to tempt, which I believe is according to his nature in existence in relation to the Creator and to creation. And this is a guess - in certain situations he is permitted to go beyond the usual threshold of tempting OR it could be just as likely that in the fullness of Truth, the closer people get to the Creator, the more satan has it in for them combined with the fact that those close to the Creator might also have an extra sensitivity to the realms and dominions, and so satan makes himself present to them in a more obvious way (take the saints who were in receipt of ‘extra grace’, for example) - he becomes visible and can be noticeably aggressive in their presence and often makes an appearance.

 

[OneSheep]

Hi there OneSheep.

You say that they had and ‘informed conscience’, but doesn’t this mean they all ready knew what right and wrong was? As in Good and Evil?

Hi Mark

I haven’t been able to find the specifics of the “preternatural gifts”. Basically, one could speculate that their “infused knowledge” was infinite, but then if they had such knowledge they would know that their act would adversely effect their children, which would make such an act unhuman. Like I said, the scenario falls apart when scrutinized.

So, yes, definitely, in that version, knew right from wrong. How much did they know or not know? Enough for us to blame them but not so much that they wouldn’t be something like a human. (Note: If they had infused knowledge and no concupiscence, how human are they anyway? )

So, if they know right from wrong, good from evil, what is the tree about?

CCC 396: God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die."276 The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"277 symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.

So, in this explanation the tree symbolizes man’s temptation to defy, at least that is the best I can make of it. The tree tells them: Defiance=evil Obedience=good.

The setup doesn’t make sense to me because:

1. God wanted, and created somewhat autonomous beings with the innate desire for autonomy (freedom, control of environment, etc.) including, of course, the capacity to defy. So, why the test?
2. If A&E had an “infused knowledge” why did they not know that the penalty for the crime involved affected their own children? Plenty of humans risk death climbing mountains, but a human risking death at the detriment of their own children? For a bit of “knowledge”? Unhuman.
3. Is God so insecure as to see defiance of His command a defiance of Him personally? Don’t all kids “push the limits”? Yet when they push, they do not intend to defy their parents personally, they are challenging the merits (and actual outcome) of the rule being broken.
4. What does knowing the importance of obedience have to do with effect of knowing that they were naked, feeling shame? If feeling shame was the result, then they truly “learned” morality from the fruit, as the story truly implies. But then we get to the question: Why, then, would God be punishing someone for doing something wrong when they didn’t know right from wrong? We all know that there is more to being wrong or right than “It’s wrong because I said so.” Try saying that to your children older than 8! And then, why would God not explain the impact of the wrong on His children Adam and Eve?
5. Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God create a being that He knew would break the rule and He would punish them?

That’s enough for now, but there is a lot of explanation lacking.

Keep in mind that the story was told during tribal times, when disobedience of leadership could lead to death of the tribe itself. Solidarity was vital.