Chili

It was the woman who saw that the fruit was good for gaining food, wisdom and beauty. Eve was not created until the man took the serpent to be his wife and it was he who first called her Eve.

Chili

God never gave mankind the gift of free will because he created man in his own divine image and that includes free will. In other words, free will is native to man as a created being.

The fall of man occurs in Gen.3 when he wanted to be 'like god' instead of just God and have a mind of his own.

The fall is what made him earthly instead of heavenly and therefore temporal instead of eternal wherefore the prefix hu- was added to identify the dual nature of man now as human. It is therefore that humans die but man will never die [without a mind of his own] wherefore the woman was taken from man to be without a mind of her own so she could affort to never die. And so on.

Aristotle called this a condition of being that pertains to the being but is not an intrinsic part of the being. It therefore has no incarnate (hereditary) right to partake from the TOL until the human condition is subdued by the woman, etc.

James Brown

Let me read this back to make sure I've got this right. According to the Genesis myth, God created Adam from mud, then showed him around and laid down the ground rule. Adam didn't like that all the other animals had a mate (ignoring those species that reproduce asexually, or bees, or any other species that don't have male/female pairings, but anyway...) so God anesthetized Adam, withdrew a rib, and created a serpent? And when Adam woke up he took one look at this serpent? and fell so deeply in love that he decided to take the serpent? to be his wife, and he called her Eve? And in Genesis 3, Eve had a multiple personality conversation with herself and convinced herself to disobey God's only single rule? Do I have this right?

If so, I'd be very curious to see your scripture references for all this.

Chili

No you don't. God created man after his own image and it was Lord God who took woman from man to be his partner for life. From this follows that man has a created essence that goes before him which is retained by the woman who goes beside him. She'd be his backbone, so to speak, which left a void in man that was replaced with flesh and it is therefore that she is his bone of bones and flesh of flesh or womb of man here now first called woman.

As an aside to serve as an apology, there is also a female created in the image of God and she is no less and therefore equal to man as the image of God since from her also the woman is taken. It therefore can be said that womanity (the woman condition) in humans is a gift of God but since this only comes into effect after the fall of man it is not part of Gen.2.

So here we have man fully alive with woman being the fullness of man. Together they have a mind of their own but are naked to wit and therefore felt no shame.

It is not until they consumed from the tree of knowledge that knowledge and beauty add an additional image to man wherein they now are divided and therefore felt shame. This image later becomes known as their persona or ego awareness wherein only shame can be conceived to exist.

This image was first called Adam by Lord God in "Adam where are you?" To this man responded and it was then that the Lord said "Who told you that you were naked" to identify the ego that he called Adam earlier.

So Adam is the name of the persona and he took the serpent to be his wife and called her Eve in Gen.3:20. This serpent or Eve later becomes known as Magdalene who presides over the tree of Knowledge while the woman presides over the Tree of Life. They are at enmity with each other in Gen.3:15 where the woman will strike at her head while she strikes at Adam's heel. This would be how the persona is motivated, etc.

So Adam and Eve are resident of the conscious mind while man and woman (later called Christ and Mary) are resident of the subconscious mind (also called the upper room). The crucifixion and resurrection in the NT deals with the crucifixion of the ego (first Adam) that must be raised and become subservient to the second Adam or Christ identity that needs to be exposed.

Unbeliever

How could an omniscient being have free will? I don't think the divine nature could possibly include free will, if it also includes omniscience. If a being knows literally everything, then it has always known exactly everything it will and will not do, and it can never choose to do otherwise, or it would have always known of that choice, and so could've made no different choice.

James Madison

I appreciate what you have articulated here and agree with much of it but I reject your assumption libertarian free will and your understanding of free will are mutually exclusive.

Your mischaracterization of libertarian free will is what has led to this dichotomy. Libertarian free will is defined as, "Free will is affected by human nature but retains ability to choose contrary to our nature and desires. Now under this meaning, man has the ability to occasionally, perhaps most of the time, act contrary to his "sinful nature". In fact, the bible is inundated with a examples where men are characterized as "righteous" because of their decision not to sin. Job Noah just to name a few qualify as "rigtheous" men which unequivocally made decisions contrary to their sinful nature.

So it is accurate to say our sinful nature influences our decisions but does not necessarily make us decide to conform to it. Whether or not we make a decision which conforms with or departs from our sinful nature is "our" own choice.

Chili

That will depend on your definition of omniscience and free will. As I see it to be omniscient you must know your own self for which you must be of one mind and that automatically gives you free will.

Like, it is silly to think that an omniscient being knows exactly how many trees exist in the world at any moment in time or even know what he will be doing tomorrow. All he needs to know is what he is doing today and for this he needs to know the he/she who is doing it.

Julian

[MOD]
This sounds more like philosophy to me, so we'll try it over there...

Julian
Moderator BC&H
[/MOD]

sweetiepie

Depends on the theist. You might be wise to point to Gabriel-- or various other angels that didn't fall-- as having choice but always choosing good. But the creating of things that choose to be evil isn't itself necessarily a bad thing, as, of course, such things might want to be made. Not to mention, at this point there's the whole devil problem, which, by most christian standards, was aroudn before the fall.
And then all of this aside. You might simply argue that the eating of the apple was teh first bad choice. That having free will means you will-- eventually do evil-- and the apple is the first noteworthy evil of mankind.
really it was all a setup. i mean who the hell sticks an apple tree in a garden run by insolent humans and EXpects them not to eat?
Words words words. Gift-theft. Same thing. If he wants people to have free will, but doesn't want them to be good on their own-- then what can you expect. It's more like telling your stupid child-- I'll let you choose to eat all your halloween candies in one day-- but I can't promise you'll like it.

He clearly expected em to eat teh fruit. He's not dumb.