Adam: created perfect?

[Dan57]

Perfection is not a characteristic limited to God. Creation can only be as perfect as it was created to be. God declared creation to be good and so it was good. It was created exactly in the manner God designed it to act. A&E decided to knowingly deviate from doing what they were designed to do, which was to love perfectly - they added the task of determining good from evil, which ended up turning out badly.

it turns out that the closest humans can get to determining good from evil is to declare selfish desire 'good' and everything that fails to meet our selfish desires as 'evil'.

Agreed, God created everything good, but only humans had the choice to deviate from good and commit sin.

 

[aspen]

agreed. BTW, with the lion picture by you name, I am picturing you speaking with Aslan's (Liam Neison?) voice - yes it has been a long day

 

[Arnie Manitoba]

The way I read genesis is that what Adam DID HAVE was access to the tree of life which he could have partaken of for eternity (eternal life)

What Adam DID NOT HAVE was the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil

UNTIL he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil .... which doomed him and all humans to death ..... thus God denied Adam (and all humans) access to the tree of life .

The tree of life STILL EXISTS and is mentioned several times in Revelation 22. Sounds like we will partake of it in the future.

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On a slightly different note ..... has anyone ever read and contemplated carefully the following verse from Genesis 3:22

22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

 

[aspen]

arnie - I agree with most of what you are saying. I do not believe the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a magic tree, however. the very act of eating from it was enough to introduce human selfishness or human evil into the world. I think God was merely commenting to the Heavenly court that humans had just taken on a responsibility reserved for God alone - like a parent declaring that a naughty child must believe he is a grown up when he misbehaves. Not trying to minimize original sin, btw.

 

[Axehead]

He was created perfectly innocent without any guile.

 

[Angelina]

I agree axehead, A & E were created without defect and in the image of the creator

 

[Arnie Manitoba]

arnie - I agree with most of what you are saying. I do not believe the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a magic tree, however. the very act of eating from it was enough to introduce human selfishness or human evil into the world. I think God was merely commenting to the Heavenly court that humans had just taken on a responsibility reserved for God alone - like a parent declaring that a naughty child must believe he is a grown up when he misbehaves. Not trying to minimize original sin, btw.

I expect you are right ..... it was not a 'magic tree" per say ..... but it did open a forbidden doorway of some sort ..... I wonder if we will find out those details .

Have you noticed in rev 22 it says the tree (singular) is on BOTH sides of the river of life ? ..... sounds like the river runs through it or something.

Then it says there are 12 crops of fruit every month ..... comes to 144,000 per year ...... but it is the leaves that are for healing the nations

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Sounds like there will be "nations" in the next life too ...... interesting ......

And the word "month" is used .... does that mean we will still have months and years ???? ..... kinda twists my thinking as eternity being a "place without time" ....

My mind also wonders about the tree of knowledge ...... is it still around ?.... do humans still have access to it ?..... maybe in some secret occult conspiracy-theory temple somewhere :) :) :) .... just kidding ...... sort of .