Dean Anderson

You are contradicting the Bible, again.

Show me the verse in Genesis that says that the garden was perfect.

I'll start by showing you two that say it wasn't perfect:

Note that the garden requires someone to work in it. This is the reason that Yahweh creates Adam.

If the garden were a perfect place, Adam would not have needed to toil in it - he could have just lounged around.

If the garden were a perfect place then Adam would not need help to tend it. If the garden were a perfect place, then Yahweh would have got the business of making Adam a helper right first time around, rather than having to make him animal helpers that turn out to be not good enough and then having to make him a woman helper as well.

You are both contradicting the Bible and contradicting yourself here.

Adam and Eve had gained knowledge of morality and this had made them more like the gods. Yahweh kicked them out before they also gained immortality and became fully gods.

So to get this straight, you are saying...

1) Yahweh couldn't let Adam and Eve live forever because of their sinful state.
2) Yahweh saved Adam and Eve from their sinful state by killing an animal for them.

So if he saved them from their sinful state by killing an animal for them, how come he still couldn't let them live for ever?

Also, since Yahweh (according to you) saved them from their sinful nature - how come all their descendents (conceived long after they were kicked out of the garden) still inherited that nature?

dado

reading your beliefs into the text instead of deriving your beliefs from the text - nice!

dado

Adam chose a mortal lifespan of hard toiling for his own direct benefit over an eternity of (assumed) relatiavly easy toiling for someone else's direct benefit. taken in context with Abraham's stories - where he is the first person to directly challange G-d and creates the first covenant that doesn't just require "of man" but also requires "of G-d" - it seems the message is pretty clear that human independance and freedom of thought is not a sin-generator but rather a cherised trait.

instead of saying A&E failed, why not say they passed? despite the (parental?) warnings, despite the (implied) promise of eternal ease, A&E chose independence and possibility of growth over what was tantamount to benign slavery. this seems to fit so much better with more or less universal principles of evolution, entrepreneurship, etc. we are not a status-quo species.

but at any rate, i just don't see how it is consistent to say A&E failed anything - they were automatons and had no capacity for success or failure. if there is a failure in Gan Eden, it belongs to G-d itself - which implies there was no failure and this was the path all along.

Mageth

"Image" in this usage strongly implies a physical likeness. That's hard for Christians to swallow, I know. In any case, here you seem to be projecting the "image" of a human being onto God.

Likewise, there's no mention of those qualities in God until much later in the bible. The creation accounts surely don't portray God as being any one or all three of the "big O's". Instead, it seems to contradict the omni-attributes later attributed to God.

That's funny; in the first paragraph, you gave a long list of God-like attributes in humans. So apparently being human-like includes quite a bit of god-likeness. We, of course, are not "perfect gods", but if a perfect God created us, surely he created us as "perfect humans."

And I didn't say anything about God creating us as an exact replica of him. I'm asking Magus (or you) if God made us "perfect" - i.e., perfect human beings. If God is perfect, surely his creation must have been perfect, for how can imperfection come from perfection? And if A&E were perfect, how could they sin? The "human frailties" you speak of would be part of God's perfect creation. So why should God be angered when the creation he created that way "failed" due to its frailty?

Either God created us imperfect (with the ability to fail) and is thus himself imperfect (for a perfect God would not create imperfection, and the ability to fail is imperfection) or God created us perfect and thus we could not fail. Which is it? Or can someone dream up some middle road?

I'm asking Magus (and apparently you) to explain how you think this problem of perfection can be overcome.

And note that, as I'll try to clarify below, your statement points out that labeling God as "perfect" is problematic, for what can any of us compare God to except OUR idea of what a perfect God would be.

However, a perfect creator, whatever else its attriutes are, could not create imperfection. A perfect machine does not turn out imperfect parts. A perfect program does not generate imperfect output. So it seems that, if the world was created with imperfection built-in, then God is not a perfect creator, or else God is "perfect" and the imperfection was intentional. In either case, the portrayal of God as righteoulsy angered by the failure of A&E is in serious doubt.

BTW, the concept many have of God as being "perfect" is questionable, IMO. If God is the only God, as monotheism suggests, then there is nothing to compare God to to justify calling him "perfect" other than in a trivial sense. Judgment of perfection requires a model of perfection derived from a set or category of objects; it requires comparison. If God is the only god in the set of gods, then one can call him a "perfect" sort of God, but then he's the only one so that's not really saying anything. There's nothing to compare him to to gauge his perfection. We certainly can't compare God to humans, who, as you rightly pointed out, aren't fully "God-like". So then, if there is only one God, and only one God possible, then whatever that God is is the "perfect" example of a God. But this says nothing about his attributes.

So what people tend to do, as you pointed out above, is to compare (or conceive) God according to THEIR idea of what a perfect God should be. And, from the first comment you made in this post, fallaciously compare God to the "image" of human beings and consider God a sort of "perfected" human image - a human image that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc.

"Love" is not mentioned as an attribute of God in his relation to humans until much later in the Bible. And definitely not in Genesis as a reason or motivation for God's creation. There is no reason or motivation given for God's creation.

So if God had to set guidelines and give consequences, apparently he realized his creation wasn't perfect. Thus, your left with the problems of a "perfect" god creating an imperfect creation, and justifying the "righteousness" of his anger "consequences" when the creation he created imperfect in the first place failed (which, if he was omniscient, he would have known they would do

Again, how could a "morally perfect" God create morally imperfect beings, which A&E would have to be to disobey God. In any case, Genesis makes no mention or gives no hint of God being morally perfect; again, that concept of God comes about much later. As does the concept of God being "unchanging". Early in the Bible, God seems to change quite a bit.

Mageth

C'mon, Magus, surely you know what I mean. There's no way to link the significance or meaning of the Hebrews scripture with God making clothes of skin for A&E beyond reading way too much into the account. The Genesis verse makes no mention of blood or of making remission for sins. God makes no attempt to provide any remission of sins for A&E in Genesis. Instead, he is portrayed as raining consequences down on them.

If anything can be read into the Genesis verse, perhaps it's that God was a bit regretful of his harsh treatment of his creations, felt a bit sorry for them in their nakedness and thus clothed them. A rather tender moment. And note that this is one of the few, if not the only, time in the OT that God is portrayed as possibly touching a human.

Mageth

This has probably already been pointed out. If god created humans with free will but "not divine", and thus not strong enough to resist temptation, then how exactly is God justified in giving "consequences" to humans for not resisting temptation? He created us this way. He set us up to fail, apparently with full knowledge that we would fail and thus "introduce sin".

Perhaps that's why God eventually had to "die"; he finally realized sin was his doing, and thus if anyone had to pay for it, it was him.

Magdlyn

Might I just mention the Gnostics had a solution for a perfect god creating an imperfect cosmos and earth.

YHWH god was and is not perfect. He is deluded. He is not the only god. He just thinks he is. There were several generations of gods, or emanations of the Great God, before YHWH came along.

In fact, he is an "abortion," or wrongly conceived offspring of his Mother Sophia. And, he is not Jesus' father.

Christ, in the form of the snake, is the good guy of the story, helping and protecting the poor victims/slaves of YHWH, Adam and Eve. Eve is inhabited by Sophia for a time as well, sorry for her inadvertant offspring's misdeeds.

Faith

I'd be curious if someone familiar with the translation would agree with the "physical likeness" part. I'm more inclined to think it refers to a "spiritual likeness".


God created all things and called His work "very good".

So a perfect machine doesn't turn our imperfect parts, or at least not in the absence of some outside force. God created all things. By His own admission, that included evil, or at least the possibility of doing evil. A&E were created without sin, but they obviously they were capable of disobeying God's Word. Being created sin-free doesn't preclude sinning, especially if in the presence of an evil force. God could've made them love and obey Him, but He didn't. He could've kept them fully dependent upon Him, but He didn't. He set guidelines and gave them freedom to choose their paths.

The Bible says God banished A&E from Eden. There is no mention of anger, only consequence for challenging God's Word.

dado

i strongly suspect the meaning has changed over time. it is highly likely the original story creators imagined a physical resemblance, but that has long since changed to the idea of a more transcendental G-d and now we have "spiritual" resemblance.

so you're both right.

dado

this is an assumption - a widely held one - but an assumption nonetheless.

it is equally consistent to say G-d simply made them to do whatever they were last told to do. eating the forbidden fruit then becomes not an act of rebellion or disobediance but one of *obediance*. for them to know the serpent was not speaking for G-d - remember, they are in Gan Eden, the very definition of G-dliness - would require a level of discerne-tion there is no evidence they were given.

i just don't see any way to blame A&E for anything: either they knew and didn't really need the fruit or they were not designed with the capability of dealing with contrary advice from another of G-d's creatures.