Though the vicarious sacrifice resolving the paradox between infinite love and infinite justice was rather neatly done as well.

I fall back on the Protoevangelium there; only two people ever lived before it, and they were the one who received it, so everyone is covered to an extent equal to their awareness. IMHO; personal dogmata are not doctrine, obviously.


Very much so, yet it seems paradoxical, or nearly so, as well. How could there be free will before sin? Yet how could there be sin before free will?

Again, my personal dogma, but the best resolution I can find is that Adam and Eve had free will before the Fall, but did not have choice until the serpent tempted Eve. Prior to that there was free will and the ABILITY to disobey God, but without AWARENESS of that ability. They could disobey at any time, but it was so foreign to their comprehension they never did. I never had a nicotine craving until I started smoking, but now cannot go more than an hour or two without wanting a cigarette very badly. Even though I know it does me no good, does significant harm and will utlimately kill me if I continue doing it—I do it anyway, knowing all that, because I am an idiot. And because I made a very bad choice that tainted my body with something it now demands regularly, and I grant that demand.

Yet where is choice without appreciation for the consequences of the options? Even stating, "in the day that you eat from it you will surely die," is not terribly informative for a being that has never witnessed, let alone experienced, death (and reverting to "dying you shall die" does not help matters.) But all the other harmful consequences (e.g. ones son murdering another of ones sons) are not just unknown but literally unimaginable. God could have explained every single detail of the negative things that would result from the Fall and Adam and Eve would have just stared in confusion like the simpletons they were. "Death" and "suffering" had no more meaning to them than "television" or "Certs, with Retzyn™."

Since they could not choose disobedience, they could not truly choose obedience either; it was both the default option and the ONLY option. The Fall changed all that, because once they knew evil first hand they could reject it, or not, and could obey God from love, or not. It changed a lot of other things, too; it enabled the ultimate demonstration of Gods love, justice, glory and power in the Crucifixion. In that light the Fall seems both inevitable and necessary.

The one thing I cannot really understand is whence comes the serpent, whom a perfect God could not create evil. Even if we say enticing man to sin was not itself sinful, the bible says the serpent lied (in fact, that the serpent accused GOD of lying when He said eating the forbidden fruit was fatal.) All the same issues seem to apply even if free will is assumed as a given. If the Devil tempted Eve to Fall (which Genesis does not explicitly state, though strongly implying it,) who or what tempted him? The only answer I can suggest is not one I like: That the devil is as infinitely knowledgeable as God is, and inferior principally in that God is inherently greater.


*hisses menacingly but enticingly*