Idolator

Since, ultimately, this is all just a matter of which afterlife doctrine we're supposing Christians to have, I should point out that there are at least four major opinions on the matter.

The earliest one, that was probably held by most Christians, was that after death, you go where you deserve to go. Christians go to the best place, righteous unbelievers go to various good places, and bad people get burned.

Around the 3rd century, Origen briefly popularized universal salvation. The idea was that everyone would eventually make it into heaven. (Origen even believed that Satan would get to return.) This view was more or less stamped out in the 6th century by the Catholic Church, but it made a resurgence among post-Enlightenment liberal Christians. (My mother, a Lutheran minister, believes in universal salvation.)

There is also annihilationism, which holds that the unsaved simply die, and that's that.

And of course, there is what is now known as Traditionalism, which is that good Christians go to heaven and everyone else is kind of screwed.

WishboneDawn

Not a bad reading but I don't accept the serpent was satan or even necessarily evil.

Stumpjumper

Federal theology (the view that man has inherited original sin from a literal Adam) relys upon the historicity of Genesis. An allegorical reading with social sin (not inherited original sin) and a covenental view between man and God will give you an arrangement of grace...

In fact, the grace is there regardless of whether or not Noah existed... Abraham was called out of the Noachic covenent of grace.

Quetzalcoatl

Is English your first language? The story says that god will not cause it to flood again. Where did you get the forgiveness part from? Was it after the god in the story drowned mankind including puppies and babies?

Quetzalcoatl

So Noah didn’t exist but Abraham was called out of the “Noachic covenent of grace”, and I thought physics was complicated.

So how does this social sin work? Did the Australopithecus africanus sin? What about the Homo habilis? My biology tells me that these creatures had to fight for their food. That their women had labor pains etc. So at what point was there a perfect state before they broke away from god? At what point was grace needed?

Clivedurdle

The xians who reached china in the eighth century dumped the idea of original sin!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/034...lance&n=283155

Martin Palmer Jesus Sutras.

jfrond

There is a great article on original sin, and how silly it is, here. Completely changed how I look at the concept.

Idolator

Mostly taken from an older post of mine:
Open your Bible, go to Genesis 2:22, read to the start of Chapter 3, then skip verses 1-19 and start again at 3:20. Continue to about 4:3. Notice it's still a pretty smooth narrative. Adam and Eve "cleave," there's some "knowing," and they get kicked out of Eden for having knowledge. Now go back to 2:22, and keep reading through to 4:3 (without skipping 3:1-3:19). Notice how that part kind of sticks out? Someone taped over the sex scene, and added some part about a "serpent" convincing Eve to get "knowledge." They didn't do a very good job of it, either, because it's really obvious in the Hebrew.

What if we don't, and instead assume that this is a retelling of an earlier Mesopotamian myth that men and women were once one creature, complete. except in this one, Adam and Eve "cleave" (meaning "join," that is, the opposite of bara, which normally means "to separate" but which is also used to mean "to create" when the subject is YHWH, as in the Hebrew text of Genesis), and then they gain "''"'"forbidden knowledge."'"''"? The exact account of how they got that knowledge was, at some point, replaced with a crude penis joke (see above), possibly so some misogynists could kick the women out of the priesthood.

This explanation is very neat, because it fits in perfectly with what we know of the Mesopotamians and it doesn't require us to pretend that God Almighty confused "Satan" with "serpent" in his autobiography.
That's kind of a strange definition of good, but you could use it if you wanted to. My definition of good is based more on humanitarian ideals, and I think it's defined a lot better than your God.

It's a shame there isn't an emoticon for a cock-eyed uncomprehending stare.

I could really use an emoticon like that right about now....

So, it's OK for God to be God and not God, but it's dangerous for humans to be God and not God. So humans have to become part of God, so they can safely be not God at the same time? Is this why there have been no math/religion double-majors since Sir Isaac Newton was caught practicing alchemy while being a legitimate scientist?

As for the rest, I can only say

Stumpjumper

It's part of the redactive narrative. The Torah was not written by just one person as it's clear that there were four authors and perspectives. What is important in the relationship between man and God that they believed was accurate and that relationship was one of grace.

The world has always existed inside of God's grace and that was the main message of Jesus. You did not have to fulfill the external religious law to be worthy of God's grace as the entire world exists inside of God's grace. Jesus said "The Kingdom of God is spread upon the ground though the people do not see it!"...

Social sin is mans propensity to reject God's grace and it exists because of freedom within creation...

maxxmann

The story of A&E eating the "forbidden" fruit is mostly about how this situation redefined what it meant to be human. It opened up a whole new reality for A&E. The manifestation of their nakedness is central to the story.

After they ate, the first thing they realized was that they were naked. For the first time they saw their differences and sought to cover them up with fig leaves. However they "saw" eachother prior to the fall, they did not see their nakedness as something to hide. Their uniqueness as male and female was seen as complimentary to one another, not something to be protected from the other.

The "self" for A&E prior to the fall was experienced as being with or being in proper relationship to. But after the fall, "self" was experienced as standing alone or standing over and against the other. The same rang true of their new relationship with God. No longer did they wait for him in the garden, naked. They hid from him because they were naked, not because they ate of the tree. They saw that God was something very different from themselves and they sought to hide from him.

An interesting point to see is that even after they ate and God pronounced their eviction from the garden, he provided clothes for them. Their provision of fig leaves for themsleves was not adequate and God saw that they at least have adequate clothing. It is not much, but it shows that God, in spite of A&E, had compassion on them.

So to answer the OP, forgivness does not seem to be the main point, the bible takes that issue up elsewhere. The main point seems to be that relationships were altered drastically and even in that, God showed compassion.