Agemegos

CG Jung has an interesting take on this in his Answer to Job. God never used to forgive anyone. It wasn't until he was morally confounded by Job that He realised that He had any moral obligation to His creatures, that the realised anything other than that his power to do things to us entailed a right to do them, and that He is guilty of everything we have suffered in this vale of tears to which He sent us. His sacrifice on the cross was in the nature of an atonement, and the rewards of the afterlife an attempt at restitution. Interesting theory, though I can't make out the tenses in Jung's claims of things that are 'psychologically true'.

Stumpjumper

No. Jesus simply showed us that forgiveness was always available for all. Its even in the ancient creation myth:

The forgiveness and lasting covenant between man and God is even within Genesis 1-11. It's unfortunate that people don't understand what was implied...

Genesis 9 (The Covenant of Grace between God and mankind)
And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

David B

Perpetual generations?

That's Armageddon, the second coming, and the rapture fucked then.:devil3:

Stumpjumper

Yep.

The fundamentalist position of God's wrath and penal substitution doesn't hold up under a covenental reading..

Yep.

sunspark

So is it not, then, an unjust command that they distinguish between right and wrong? How would they possibly know that it would be "wrong" or at least quite foolish not to heed God's warning? and even further unjust to punish not only them but all man-kind? If you don't understand what it means to "disobey", how can you possible be responsible for doing it? you don't even know that that is.

And how is it that once all get to heaven that this trait - the ability to be able to distiguish between right and wrong - remains? or do we reset to zero and possibly have the whole situation happen again?

gwastad.prydydd

It might help to try to understand Satan's temptation of Eve in a different light.

We all know the words, right? '". . . and, then, you will be like God: knowing good and evil."'

We often take the concept of "knowing" as a synonym for "recognising" or "discerning between"; but I am not sure that we are really representing the situation accurately when we do so.

Remember what happened very shortly after Eve and Adam initially disobeyed God? 'And Adam knew his wife; and she conceived . . .'

What if the concept of "knowing" used by Satan to tempt Eve has more in common with Adam's conjugation of his wife than with our concept of "recognition"?

What if we re-render Satan's temptation as, '"and, then, you will be like God: experiencing - interacting with - both good and evil."'?

It sheds a whole new light on the situation.

We are probably justified in considering that both Adam and Eve had a fairly adequate conception of God's authority and (what our forebears called) "worthship". After all, He created everything; and that fact was much more immediate to them (to Adam, at least!) than it is to us.

I find that the terms "good" and "evil" have very little use. Common they are, indeed: but they are so relative - so ambiguous - as to be entirely unhelpful. If I say that something is "good", what do I really mean? I have said nothing at all until you know what I mean by "good".

However, if I say that a thing is unpleasing to God, we are in a much better position. Presumably, you are familiar with my concept of God; therefore, you know exactly what I mean.

Eve and Adam were not tempted toward an unknown; rather, they were tempted to supplant the place of God in their lives (that is, His place of perfect fulness: that fulness referred to by Paul when he writes of 'growing up into the fulness of Him Who is the Head: even Christ [Jesus]').

Let's look at Satan's temptation again: '". . . and, then, you will become as God: experiencing both that which is God and that which is not God."'

Now, it is quite one thing for God to experience that which is Him and that which is not; but it is a very dangerous thing for humans to do so. Of course, most of us know that we are not God - we are part of that 'not-God' that exists.

However, it is the express purpose of God to see us incorporated into His being as unique parts of a perfect body, free to move within His perfect bounds. When we accept God - when we create (as it were) God-like circumstances (as Eve and Adam should have done had they not disobeyed God) - we give over yet another part of ourselves for His use. That is not to say that we are cogs in a machine - or, even, servants, for '"I will not call you servants; rather, I will call you friends: for servants do not know what their Master does; but I have made known to you all that I have heard from the Father."'

Eve and Adam had the chance to make way for more godliness in creation; but they chose otherwise. They knew that they were choosing other than God; they did not know the specifics of that other: but they knew that it was not God; and they knew God.

Don't pity Eve's and Adam's ignorance. They knew - well enough - that which they chose. Indeed, their initial unGodliness was exactly Satan's: aspiring to the throne of God Himself - to equality with God, judging the desirability of God and not-God as if they had either the necessary experience or the capacity for such experience.

Their essential ungodliness was not disobedience: it was the ungodly pride (for only God is justified in self-pride; yet, they prided themselves as judges, just as Satan had) that manifested itself in disobedience. For that, they were punished. God, knowing their hearts as He may know all things, was able to address His response directly to their attitudes and thoughts - not merely to their outwardly-visible actions.

Don Joe

That all's nice and fine, but do you have anything better to support it than "This must be what the text really means. Otherwise, it's just a biblical contradiction and I won't have that."?

seebs

Well, that's not a bad start on figuring out what something means.

David B

Apart from it relying on a literal Adam, a literal Eve, a literal Satan cast out of what I presume is a literal heaven for disobedience to a god whose existence has yet to be established?

David B

Clivedurdle

The result of eating the fruit was knowledge of good and evil - or thought - we became as gods!

Jung takes this a step further and discusses us redeeming god!

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=165044

By psychologically true he meant stuff that makes sense in our guts. We know we are animals but we understand we die. This existential crisis that we all experience - our mortality and our god like powers is something we all live with and is the basis of our stories - like the interesting one of sin, death, gods son resurrection happily ever after - except Job does put a spanner in the works by trapping god in morality!

Science is sin donchaknow?