There are 3 critical distinctions: 1) Ability to sin, 2) Awareness of sin and 3) Appreciation of sin - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 05/03/2012 04:13:41 AM
The point is empirical:
1) Before the serpent, man had the ability to sin without either awareness nor appreciation of it,
2) After Eve was tempted she had the ability and awareness without the appreciation and
3) Afterward she and Adam had ability, awareness and appreciation.
The bible is explicit that they were naked without shame before but clothed themselves from shame after they fell; the Tree of Knowledge was rightly named (and whether it was metaphorical or literal is essentially moot.) Yet without both knowledge and understanding of sin they could not truly choose obedience in preference, because no choice is possible absent knowledge, and no preference possible absent understanding.
Well you bring up an interesting topic. Can there be free will before sin? The answer to that is yes. And the Bible tells explores this for us. Ok...pre-time, creation or whatever...there was God in heaven, with all the angels. It was perfect. It was heaven. Then Lucifer *chose* to rise up and defy God...and a whole third of the angels agreed with this move. So notice this....in an existence of perfection, one individual rebelled against God (that would be sin) because he wanted to (that would be free will).
Now if this was an isolated incident, it would cloud the issue a bit, but it wasn't. A full third of the angels went along with the defiance. That's a pretty good example of the existence of free will within perfection. And also a good example of there being a choice between something you know and something you want (even if its a foreign concept).
Concepts foreign to understanding cannot be chosen. What the Devil and the rest (probably) had was free will WITH knowledge but WITHOUT understanding. Ability and awareness, but not appreciation. Incidentally, and as you may be aware, whether angels have free will is a contentious issue, despite the angelic fall.
In this instance, the key (IMHO) is that the Devil and many (most likely all) angels had rational but not empirical knowledge of evil. Rational knowledge was inevitable given reason, because intellect combined with awareness of God automatically gave them knowledge of a dialectic of God and Not-God. They therefore had some choice, but not appreciation of it, since Not-God was only a concept, foreign to their experience (though not their knowledge.)
That may resolve my conundrum about how the Devil could fall from sinlessness: He had means and opportunity, but no motive. There still remains the question of how (not why) he acquired motive, but that is more a temporal than moral question. Interestingly, I think the (second) Nicene Creed sheds some light on it: The Holy Spirits "procession" from and between the Father and the Son, and that the Son was "begotten, not made," support the idea both begetting and procession are eternal, as are Gods creation of the world the Creed also mentions. The issue of whether timelessness permits anything to happen is resolved by everything perpetually happening at once, while we perceive it as temporal because our understanding of eternity is as lacking as Adam and Eves understanding of sin before the Fall.
Using your own example, you had both ability (to smoke or not to) and awareness (its effects short/long term). Its just that awareness was not personal. For you, it was theory...it was a story told to you by someone else. For whatever reason, you exercised your free will. You made a decision. Your personal motivations, thought process, or expectations are beside the point. The point is that you made a decision.
Yeah, my use of "awareness" was a bit sloppy there, sorry; I conflated knowledge and understanding (or, more precisely, rational and empirical knowledge.) In the case of Eve before she encountered the serpent, however, both were lacking, and understanding only present after the decision to eat the apple (which essentially made the act of eating unnecessary, another reason to question whether the bible speaks of the literal fruit of a literal tree.)
Motivation and expectation are not entirely beside the point, because they direct free will, but thinking IS the point, because a DECISION is ONLY thought. My decision to smoke, like all decisions, was not the random outcome of a random event, but a rational choice based on motivations and expectations. However the ACT of smoking followed as a consequence of the rational decision to do so as surely as that decision was influenced (but not determined) by motivations and expectations.
You will have to show me where the text alludes to Eve eating the fruit because she wanted to subjugate man. God said part of her PUNISHMENT would be desire for Adam, which would give HIM power over, but I see nothing that says she ACTED from desire for power over HIM. The text says,
It does allude to her motives, but none of them involve subordinating man, and the first thing it mentions her doing next is immediately giving Adam some of the fruit "desirable to make one wise." If she wanted to use the fruit to gain advantage over Adam, immediately re-leveling the playing field would be a counterproductive act. Let us leave the battle of the sexes out of this one, eh?
To the extent Gods warning referred to spiritual death, Eve DID die right then: Her sin marred her perfection, created a barrier to God and therefore spiritually killed her. Not that it matters a great deal anyway, because, despite most modern translations rendering it "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," the literal translation is closer to "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely commence an agonizing death."
Not that a literal reading is necessarily wise; as you may have noticed, despite agreeing (at least for the OT and Gospels) with the folks who coined the term "inerrancy" across town from where I was attending first grade, I do not agree with reading the whole bible literally. Many sections of it are explicitly figurative (including all parables,) and many others are implicity so (my favorite example is that Mephibosheth did not LITERALLY mean he was a "dead dog" when he referred to himself as one in addressing David.) The farther we go back in OT chronology, the harder it is to be certain which passages are figurative and which are not (unless they are explicitly identified as the former, of course.)
All that said, I agree her motives would be irrelevant even had the serpent been wholly honest and truthful, but, again, her thinking has the utmost relevance, because her decision (and thus sin) lay there rather than in eating the fruit. Eating the fruit only expressed the decision physically and compounded her preceding sin in deciding to do so; until she acted on it she might at least have changed her decision.
So are you saying that God is somehow obligated to explain every little detail? Or is it just enough that God, who well, spoke existence into reality told you to not do something. Yes, death and suffering were foreign concepts to them. What wasn't foreign to them is God telling them something. God *literally* speaking with them...like out loud.
That is certainly enough, and I do not deny their accountability. I am merely pointing out choice was impossible without both rational AND empirical knowledge of consequences. Prior to rational knowledge no choice existed, and prior to empirical knowledge only the positive choice to obey God (not the negative choice of rejecting sin) did. God set the stage so man would ultimately be capable of and some make both choices, with the notable aid of His grace and sacrifice. To be clear, I am not arguing God authors sin any more than giving a child a choice between broccoli and chocolate makes them choose the latter, however inevitable one knows it to be.
Well here's a fun thought. Was the crucifixion destined to happen from the onset of Creation, or was it a just destined to happen from The Fall? I've pondered this thought, and here's my brain on the matter. Now of course, in this thought process I'm equating Lucifer and the serpent. From however long Lucifer has been in existence, he knows God. He knows God's love. Upon creation of humanity, I think that Lucifer was going to test God. How far does God's love extend? Even if those He loves disobey Him....will He still love them?
What I'm getting to is this. Its my pet-theory that Satan tested to see what God would do. Is this whole "love" thing gonna actually play out long term? Would God "go to the mat" for these humans? I'm not saying that Lucifer can tell the future, or that he's omnicient in any way...I'm just saying that he was testing God.
Ironically, the best answer to your first question is probably from the chapter of Revelation that states the number of the Beast:
Or consider Romans 8:19-22
The last line, of course, is pretty much the basis for similar phrases in various formal creeds from Church Fathers.
I often feel bad for non-human animals, because THEY seem the ones who got a raw deal: When Adam and Eve brought death into the world they were all subjected to suffering and eventual physical death along with humanity, despite innocence (except perhaps the serpent, depending on how literally we take it to be.) On the other hand, in terms of eternal spiritual life it is hard to dispute they are in a state of grace. In most if not all cases they lack the reason for accountability in the first place, but it certainly seems creation itself has long endured an extended innocent torment similar to the Crucifixion of the Lord through Whom it was created. He is the Template of creation it has thus followed "religiously." Eternally, neither the worlds foundation, temporal Crucifixion nor new heaven and earth are distant.
Anyway, yes, the Crucifixion was destined from the moment of creation; Pauls words can be interpeted that way and John says it outright.
I think that this may be where you're getting caught up. God didn't create something evil. He created something with free will which itself *chose* evil. That's a very, very big distinction to grasp onto. God created the angels perfectly...yet Lucifer (and the fallen third) chose to do evil. God created humanity perfectly...yet we chose to do evil.
If anything, this should demonstrate that God doesn't want love-robots. He wants someone to choose to love him. To use one of your phrases, love cannot be coerced. To address your question, who tempted Lucifer? I'd saying nothing overtly did. I'd say, if anything, his own "heart" did. By heart, I mean his free will, his emotions, his intelect. The Bible does state that the heart is deceitful. Our emotions are deceitful and lead us to make poor decisions.
Think of Lucifer's situation. God is worshiped. God is God...He always has been. Lucifer, on the other hand, is a created being. He isn't being worshiped...he's the one doing the worship. how far of a reach is it to think that sometime Lucifer thought "I'd like to be worshiped sometime." That started the ball rolling. It wouldn't be long before that turned into overt rebellion, not just an interal thought/concept.
I think you are right the Devil tempted himself; the awareness/appreciation distinction largely eliminates my confusion. He had awareness of sin, which is sufficient for the positive choice of obedience (but not the negative choice of actively rejecting sin.)
In terms of "testing God," while there is plenty of debate over the nature of the Devils sin, I think it was solely in challenging Gods authority; mans presence and role may have given weight to that decision, but I think the decision was always inevitable. It is not clear that the Devil is in any way inferior to God except in that he IS inferior. That could have maddening consequences in itself; even if the Devil found a way to increase any or all of his abilities, even infinitely, God would always be greater BY DEFINITION. Not sure if you follow the Order of the Stick webcomic, but it has a series of strips where one of the characters tells the other they will later defeat a currently absent nemesis because of all the levels gained before their next meeting. The second character responds that that does not work, because the nemeses of main characters are always equal matches, so whenever the protagonists ability increases the antagonists increases proportionally, even if the antagonist is just sitting around playing cards at the time. It might be kind of like that with God and the Devil, except God always starts out ahead, so even if the Devil is omnipotent and/or omniscient God is "omnipotent and omniscient+1." I know that would frustrate the Hell out of (or perhaps into) me.
I STRONGLY agree the whole thing is all about God not wanting "love-robots," which is what I mean by "Love cannot be coerced" (though it applies in many other areas also.) In a very real sense, even God cannot create lovebots, because even God cannot create a logical impossibility. That is the problem with the old "can God nuke a burrito so hot even HE could not eat it:" Such a thing cannot BE, so even God can create it no more than He can "dense vacuum" or "bright darkness."
Without the ability to reject God there could be no ability to accept Him, because a relationship with Him would be an unalterable default state. The Fall is as much about that as the Crucifixion is, because it gave man the ability to say of sin, "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt: I prefer God." What is more, that and the Crucifixion give us the ability to accept God out of active desire for Him for His own sake, not fear of Hell or self-advancement. Hence another Pithy Pet Phrase: Fear of Hell cannot keep one out of it; only love for and from God can do that.
You theological tease.
~Jeordam
I am no tease: I deliver.
1) Before the serpent, man had the ability to sin without either awareness nor appreciation of it,
2) After Eve was tempted she had the ability and awareness without the appreciation and
3) Afterward she and Adam had ability, awareness and appreciation.
The bible is explicit that they were naked without shame before but clothed themselves from shame after they fell; the Tree of Knowledge was rightly named (and whether it was metaphorical or literal is essentially moot.) Yet without both knowledge and understanding of sin they could not truly choose obedience in preference, because no choice is possible absent knowledge, and no preference possible absent understanding.
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?
Well you bring up an interesting topic. Can there be free will before sin? The answer to that is yes. And the Bible tells explores this for us. Ok...pre-time, creation or whatever...there was God in heaven, with all the angels. It was perfect. It was heaven. Then Lucifer *chose* to rise up and defy God...and a whole third of the angels agreed with this move. So notice this....in an existence of perfection, one individual rebelled against God (that would be sin) because he wanted to (that would be free will).
Now if this was an isolated incident, it would cloud the issue a bit, but it wasn't. A full third of the angels went along with the defiance. That's a pretty good example of the existence of free will within perfection. And also a good example of there being a choice between something you know and something you want (even if its a foreign concept).
Concepts foreign to understanding cannot be chosen. What the Devil and the rest (probably) had was free will WITH knowledge but WITHOUT understanding. Ability and awareness, but not appreciation. Incidentally, and as you may be aware, whether angels have free will is a contentious issue, despite the angelic fall.
In this instance, the key (IMHO) is that the Devil and many (most likely all) angels had rational but not empirical knowledge of evil. Rational knowledge was inevitable given reason, because intellect combined with awareness of God automatically gave them knowledge of a dialectic of God and Not-God. They therefore had some choice, but not appreciation of it, since Not-God was only a concept, foreign to their experience (though not their knowledge.)
That may resolve my conundrum about how the Devil could fall from sinlessness: He had means and opportunity, but no motive. There still remains the question of how (not why) he acquired motive, but that is more a temporal than moral question. Interestingly, I think the (second) Nicene Creed sheds some light on it: The Holy Spirits "procession" from and between the Father and the Son, and that the Son was "begotten, not made," support the idea both begetting and procession are eternal, as are Gods creation of the world the Creed also mentions. The issue of whether timelessness permits anything to happen is resolved by everything perpetually happening at once, while we perceive it as temporal because our understanding of eternity is as lacking as Adam and Eves understanding of sin before the Fall.
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 ultimately 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.
Using your own example, you had both ability (to smoke or not to) and awareness (its effects short/long term). Its just that awareness was not personal. For you, it was theory...it was a story told to you by someone else. For whatever reason, you exercised your free will. You made a decision. Your personal motivations, thought process, or expectations are beside the point. The point is that you made a decision.
Yeah, my use of "awareness" was a bit sloppy there, sorry; I conflated knowledge and understanding (or, more precisely, rational and empirical knowledge.) In the case of Eve before she encountered the serpent, however, both were lacking, and understanding only present after the decision to eat the apple (which essentially made the act of eating unnecessary, another reason to question whether the bible speaks of the literal fruit of a literal tree.)
Motivation and expectation are not entirely beside the point, because they direct free will, but thinking IS the point, because a DECISION is ONLY thought. My decision to smoke, like all decisions, was not the random outcome of a random event, but a rational choice based on motivations and expectations. However the ACT of smoking followed as a consequence of the rational decision to do so as surely as that decision was influenced (but not determined) by motivations and expectations.
The same can be said of Eve. She had the ability to make a decision (which she obviously did). And she was aware of the consequences (death). And just like you...that awareness was not personal. It was theory, a concept, that was communicated to her by someone else. As for her motivations, the word alludes to her having a desire to be "over" man...not just his equal. And the fact that she was tempted/tricked into by the serpent that she wouldn't die *right then*. Well, the best lies are tinged with truth, yes? She didn't die right then. And the argument can be made that it wasn't a physical death being referred to at all, but a spiritual death.
You will have to show me where the text alludes to Eve eating the fruit because she wanted to subjugate man. God said part of her PUNISHMENT would be desire for Adam, which would give HIM power over, but I see nothing that says she ACTED from desire for power over HIM. The text says,
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
It does allude to her motives, but none of them involve subordinating man, and the first thing it mentions her doing next is immediately giving Adam some of the fruit "desirable to make one wise." If she wanted to use the fruit to gain advantage over Adam, immediately re-leveling the playing field would be a counterproductive act. Let us leave the battle of the sexes out of this one, eh?
To the extent Gods warning referred to spiritual death, Eve DID die right then: Her sin marred her perfection, created a barrier to God and therefore spiritually killed her. Not that it matters a great deal anyway, because, despite most modern translations rendering it "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," the literal translation is closer to "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely commence an agonizing death."
Not that a literal reading is necessarily wise; as you may have noticed, despite agreeing (at least for the OT and Gospels) with the folks who coined the term "inerrancy" across town from where I was attending first grade, I do not agree with reading the whole bible literally. Many sections of it are explicitly figurative (including all parables,) and many others are implicity so (my favorite example is that Mephibosheth did not LITERALLY mean he was a "dead dog" when he referred to himself as one in addressing David.) The farther we go back in OT chronology, the harder it is to be certain which passages are figurative and which are not (unless they are explicitly identified as the former, of course.)
All that said, I agree her motives would be irrelevant even had the serpent been wholly honest and truthful, but, again, her thinking has the utmost relevance, because her decision (and thus sin) lay there rather than in eating the fruit. Eating the fruit only expressed the decision physically and compounded her preceding sin in deciding to do so; until she acted on it she might at least have changed her decision.
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™."
So are you saying that God is somehow obligated to explain every little detail? Or is it just enough that God, who well, spoke existence into reality told you to not do something. Yes, death and suffering were foreign concepts to them. What wasn't foreign to them is God telling them something. God *literally* speaking with them...like out loud.
That is certainly enough, and I do not deny their accountability. I am merely pointing out choice was impossible without both rational AND empirical knowledge of consequences. Prior to rational knowledge no choice existed, and prior to empirical knowledge only the positive choice to obey God (not the negative choice of rejecting sin) did. God set the stage so man would ultimately be capable of and some make both choices, with the notable aid of His grace and sacrifice. To be clear, I am not arguing God authors sin any more than giving a child a choice between broccoli and chocolate makes them choose the latter, however inevitable one knows it to be.
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.
Well here's a fun thought. Was the crucifixion destined to happen from the onset of Creation, or was it a just destined to happen from The Fall? I've pondered this thought, and here's my brain on the matter. Now of course, in this thought process I'm equating Lucifer and the serpent. From however long Lucifer has been in existence, he knows God. He knows God's love. Upon creation of humanity, I think that Lucifer was going to test God. How far does God's love extend? Even if those He loves disobey Him....will He still love them?
What I'm getting to is this. Its my pet-theory that Satan tested to see what God would do. Is this whole "love" thing gonna actually play out long term? Would God "go to the mat" for these humans? I'm not saying that Lucifer can tell the future, or that he's omnicient in any way...I'm just saying that he was testing God.
Ironically, the best answer to your first question is probably from the chapter of Revelation that states the number of the Beast:
All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Or consider Romans 8:19-22
For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now
in conjunction with John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
The last line, of course, is pretty much the basis for similar phrases in various formal creeds from Church Fathers.
I often feel bad for non-human animals, because THEY seem the ones who got a raw deal: When Adam and Eve brought death into the world they were all subjected to suffering and eventual physical death along with humanity, despite innocence (except perhaps the serpent, depending on how literally we take it to be.) On the other hand, in terms of eternal spiritual life it is hard to dispute they are in a state of grace. In most if not all cases they lack the reason for accountability in the first place, but it certainly seems creation itself has long endured an extended innocent torment similar to the Crucifixion of the Lord through Whom it was created. He is the Template of creation it has thus followed "religiously." Eternally, neither the worlds foundation, temporal Crucifixion nor new heaven and earth are distant.
Anyway, yes, the Crucifixion was destined from the moment of creation; Pauls words can be interpeted that way and John says it outright.
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.
I think that this may be where you're getting caught up. God didn't create something evil. He created something with free will which itself *chose* evil. That's a very, very big distinction to grasp onto. God created the angels perfectly...yet Lucifer (and the fallen third) chose to do evil. God created humanity perfectly...yet we chose to do evil.
If anything, this should demonstrate that God doesn't want love-robots. He wants someone to choose to love him. To use one of your phrases, love cannot be coerced. To address your question, who tempted Lucifer? I'd saying nothing overtly did. I'd say, if anything, his own "heart" did. By heart, I mean his free will, his emotions, his intelect. The Bible does state that the heart is deceitful. Our emotions are deceitful and lead us to make poor decisions.
Think of Lucifer's situation. God is worshiped. God is God...He always has been. Lucifer, on the other hand, is a created being. He isn't being worshiped...he's the one doing the worship. how far of a reach is it to think that sometime Lucifer thought "I'd like to be worshiped sometime." That started the ball rolling. It wouldn't be long before that turned into overt rebellion, not just an interal thought/concept.
I think you are right the Devil tempted himself; the awareness/appreciation distinction largely eliminates my confusion. He had awareness of sin, which is sufficient for the positive choice of obedience (but not the negative choice of actively rejecting sin.)
In terms of "testing God," while there is plenty of debate over the nature of the Devils sin, I think it was solely in challenging Gods authority; mans presence and role may have given weight to that decision, but I think the decision was always inevitable. It is not clear that the Devil is in any way inferior to God except in that he IS inferior. That could have maddening consequences in itself; even if the Devil found a way to increase any or all of his abilities, even infinitely, God would always be greater BY DEFINITION. Not sure if you follow the Order of the Stick webcomic, but it has a series of strips where one of the characters tells the other they will later defeat a currently absent nemesis because of all the levels gained before their next meeting. The second character responds that that does not work, because the nemeses of main characters are always equal matches, so whenever the protagonists ability increases the antagonists increases proportionally, even if the antagonist is just sitting around playing cards at the time. It might be kind of like that with God and the Devil, except God always starts out ahead, so even if the Devil is omnipotent and/or omniscient God is "omnipotent and omniscient+1." I know that would frustrate the Hell out of (or perhaps into) me.
I STRONGLY agree the whole thing is all about God not wanting "love-robots," which is what I mean by "Love cannot be coerced" (though it applies in many other areas also.) In a very real sense, even God cannot create lovebots, because even God cannot create a logical impossibility. That is the problem with the old "can God nuke a burrito so hot even HE could not eat it:" Such a thing cannot BE, so even God can create it no more than He can "dense vacuum" or "bright darkness."
Without the ability to reject God there could be no ability to accept Him, because a relationship with Him would be an unalterable default state. The Fall is as much about that as the Crucifixion is, because it gave man the ability to say of sin, "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt: I prefer God." What is more, that and the Crucifixion give us the ability to accept God out of active desire for Him for His own sake, not fear of Hell or self-advancement. Hence another Pithy Pet Phrase: Fear of Hell cannot keep one out of it; only love for and from God can do that.
*hisses menacingly but enticingly* 
You theological tease.
~Jeordam
I am no tease: I deliver.