If it is a mystery there is no factual basis for your hypothetical. An hypothetical supposes you have rationally accounted for the facts in discussion.
Theories about Adam's fall
- Thread starter ThomasT
- Start date
-
- Tags
- adam's sin original sin
- Status
If it is a mystery there is no factual basis for your hypothetical. An hypothetical supposes you have rationally accounted for the facts in discussion.
earl40
Puritan Board Professor
Yes my hypothetical I proposed to simply think about disobeying God to eat would have been sinful even if he did not eat which does indeed not have any factual basis because Adam and Eve were "edendued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image; having the law of God written in their hearts"
I can see now my hypothetical does not pass muster.
Thank you
I think it’s a mistake to use consciousness as evidence of freedom. The two aren’t necessarily related. Consciousness is self-awareness. When we make a choice, we’re aware of it. But did we really make a free choice just because we’re aware of having chosen something? The deterministic school of human nature doesn’t deny for a second that we believe we’re making free choices. But we do deny that self-awareness is evidence for our choices being free. There’s no logical connection here.
Your assertion that only God, and not humanity, is mysterious in the area of choice strikes me as manifestly false. If human choice (taken for the sake of argument to be free) weren’t mysterious, we should be able, at a minimum, to define the human faculty that exercises this marvelous freedom. But you haven’t told us what this faculty is. We should also be able to explain how this faculty goes about rejecting (in some cases) stronger inclinations in favor of weaker ones. But this, too, is something non-determinists have never been able to do. So I think we have to credit free choice (regarded as either real or hypothetical) as confronting us with some considerable degree of mystery.
Given your necessarian position, that is not surprising.
Yes; if it were otherwise your consciousness could not be trusted; and if that could not be trusted you could not make a rational choice. You might think you were Mary one day and Martha the next. There would be no sense of identity or continuity.
So there is no logical connection between consciousness and reality -- that is as good as saying it is fiction, not fact.
1 Corinthians 2:11, "For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?"
Romans 9:1, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost."
Galatians 1:20, "Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not."
To use consciousness, reason, and voluntary choice as an argument for contrary choice actually runs counter to your argument.
Suppose we narrated the fall of Adam to someone who’d never heard it. We’d mention that Adam possessed only good inclinations but that he ended up acting against those inclinations in a terribly self-destructive way.
The first thing our listener would do is ask if Adam had lost his power of reason. We’d tell him that Adam’s reason was working perfectly and that, in your words, he knew “exactly what he was doing.” To the extent that he was deceived, he allowed himself to be deceived.
Our listener would then ask if Adam had lost the ability to act on his desires – if he’d become a kind of robot, or a man in a sleepwalking state. We’d tell him not only that Adam didn’t act against his desires, but that his actions perfectly reflected those desires, that those desires were authentically his.
Our listener, thinking hard at this point to explain something that was becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of, might ask if Adam’s consciousness were defective, if perhaps he’d lost his ability to distinguish between himself and the serpent and that he simply acted in place of the serpent without being aware that he was a separate and independent person. We’d tell him that Adam’s consciousness - his self-awareness - was functioning without the slightest flaw and that he had no problem at all distinguishing himself from anybody else.
Our listener, now exasperated and confused, would ask how it was possible for such a creature to act in the manner he did. Here you’d respond by calling his attention to Adam’s consciousness, reason, and voluntary choice – the very things that could serve as a plausible explanation for Adam’s behavior only if they weren’t working properly.
If a ship flounders in the middle of the ocean, and we hear about it in the news, we don’t expect the ship’s plight to be explained to us by an assurance that everything was in nautical trim. If we pressed the Coast Guard for an explanation, and we were told that the engine was working the way it was designed to work, the rudder was fine, the hull was watertight, the navigation instruments were perfectly calibrated, the weather was idyllic, and the captain and crew had total control over the ship and possessed no inclination to let their ship flounder, we’d wonder when the Coast Guard official would come around to offering us an actual explanation. We wouldn’t say, well, the ship and crew were models of maritime perfection, and so then there’s obviously no mystery. In fact that’s the last thing we’d say.
And yet that’s exactly what you’re asking us to believe.
I would respond with what I responded to you when we were discussing Adam, but now after a number of posts you have either chosen to ignore it or you may have forgotten it -- Adam was created mutable. He had good inclinations. He also had the power to incline towards evil, though he was not created with evil inclinations. This supports contingency; he did in fact make a choice which originated a new course, and he did so with his psychology in perfect working order.
You keep raising your necessarian problem, and posing it to me as if it is my problem. You are the one holding that a person necessarily is what he is, and he necessarily chooses according to what he is, and cannot choose otherwise. The fact of Adam's fall is the necessarian's problem.
Last edited:
What is mutability? I think we agree that mutability is merely a potentiality, a means, a power. But a power to do something doesn’t provide us with a reason for the action. I have the power to cover myself in gasoline and set myself on fire. I could do that tonight. But my mere power to do something so self-destructive and so contrary to my nature doesn’t begin to explain why I’d choose to do it.
The fact is that I wouldn’t set myself on fire unless I found within myself the inclination for such an action. But let’s suppose that I had the power, like Adam, to choose my own inclinations. The problem here is that now I’ve merely got the power to incline myself to desire suicide, but I don’t have a motive for doing so. Even with the power of mutability I still wouldn’t have a reason for setting myself on fire. I’d still need a motive for creating the new inclination in the first place. I wouldn’t be able simply to look into my true self and decide, using my reason and voluntary choice, that death is what I wanted if, when I looked into my true self, I found no inclination for death. My inclination for death would have to precede my decision to incline myself to desire death.
Which means we’re trapped in a circle again. The fatal flaw of your attempt to explain contrary choice is that it relies on a motive that couldn’t exist until a decision had first been made to incline toward a desire underlying that motive, which itself would require a motive. Mutability is helpless without a motive, and in the case of Adam that motive would have necessarily been a sinful one or he wouldn’t have succeeded in inclining his will toward sin.
That this isn’t a problem for you, that it’s all perfectly explicable in your mind, is almost as mysterious as contrary choice itself.
Mutability means the person can change, including his motives. You don't allow this is possible. So why are you having this discussion? If nobody can change it doesn't matter what you say. Your own belief is necessitated, and everyone else's belief is necessitated, according to your necessarian scheme. You have rendered all moral discourse null and void.
It’s not mutability per se I’m calling into question. It’s the notion, as you put it, that mutability doesn’t present us with a mystery and that it shouldn’t be regarded as a serious intellectual problem. That’s the issue. In fact to examine mutability we have to regard it, at least for the purpose of our discussion, as true.
To review:
1) Mutability is simply a power.
2) In order to exercise this power, Adam had to make a choice.
3) In order to make the choice to exercise his mutability, Adam needed a motive – a sinful one.
4) In order to have a sinful motive, Adam needed a sinful inclination, one that pre-existed his decision to exercise his power of mutability.
You mentioned in your last note that Adam could change his motives, meaning, as I take it, that he could change his motives from good to bad, and that once he’d done that he’d have the motive he needed to make the choice to exercise his mutability and incline himself to sin. But in order to change his motives from good to bad, he’d first need yet another motive. To suggest, as you seem to be doing, that Adam simply chose to change his motives from good to bad with no motive behind the choice is to suggest that Adam acted for no reason. You’re saying that the whole process of Adam exercising his mutability began, ultimately, with a choice based on a motive that was itself independent of an inclination. The fall of man originated in a choice driven by an ex nihilo motive, and hence a choice that came out of thin air. Adam chose what he chose simply because he chose it.
Which would make Adam’s original choice, the one that got the whole process started, not only inexplicable but also amoral.
Why did the inclination have to pre-exist? If you grant mutability then you grant the inclination can change. Ahab humbled himself when he heard the word of judgment. He wasn't inclined to humble himself previously. Eve desired the forbidden fruit when she heard that it could make her wise. She wasn't inclined to it previously. Moral suasion is a reality of thinking, willing beings. If you don't grant the power of moral suasion why are you engaging in this discussion?
The fact that something happens doesn’t explain why it happens. Your answer to every “why” question is a “how” response. When I ask you why Adam chose to do something he had no inclination to do, your answer, invariably, is that he had the power to do it.
That this doesn’t answer my question is surely obvious to anyone following this thread, even to those who are committed to the contrary-choice hypothesis.
Your attempt at answers are merely responses. They’re dodges rather than answers. If Adam had a pair of wings that gave him the power to fly, but no inclination to fly, and one day we saw him soaring around like an eagle, and I asked you why he was flying, you’d say that Adam’s wings explained the fact that he’s flying. I’d point out that Adam had no inclination to exercise his wings, no desire to make use of his power of flight. Your response would be that Adam had the power to incline himself to the desire for flight. My counter-response (this is what you can’t seem to answer) is that Adam had no pre-existing desire to incline himself to a desire for flight in the first place. Your answer? He’s flying, so he must have been able to incline himself to the desire for flight in spite of not having a pre-existing inclination to do so.
You haven’t gone the slightest distance at answering the “why” question, and yet you’ve insisted, repeatedly, that there is no mystery, no problem, in Adam’s fall.
Why did Adam choose to exercise his power of mutability when he had no inclination to behave in such a way? I pose this question to anyone who’d like to respond.
rickclayfan
Puritan Board Freshman
@ThomasT
I'm curious as to why it matters. We must avoid prying into matters which have no explicit scriptural explanation. At best we can simply speculate. Obsession over speculations shatters our faith and leads to heresy. In order to answer your question, we would have to have sufficient knowledge of the soul.
I'm curious as to why it matters. We must avoid prying into matters which have no explicit scriptural explanation. At best we can simply speculate. Obsession over speculations shatters our faith and leads to heresy. In order to answer your question, we would have to have sufficient knowledge of the soul.
Why does this matter? Good question. The answer is that when we take something mysterious and try to pass it off as non-mysterious, we make a false claim about the fullness of our knowledge. The job of theology is to teach us about the nature of the unseen world, and this includes letting us know when we’ve reached the limits of our understanding.
rickclayfan
Puritan Board Freshman
That doesn't seem to be the issue here. You seem to be making the mysterious non-mysterious by persistently asking questions about it. That's unless I've misunderstood your intentions.
No, I’m doing quite the opposite of what you’re suggesting. MW and I have been arguing over the following proposition:
The fall of man is not mysterious, not an intellectual problem, and in terms of its essential elements, fully explicable.
I’ve been arguing against the proposition, he’s been arguing for it. So in other words, what I’m saying is that the fall of man is a mystery. I ask questions about MW’s attempts at explanation to show that these attempts of his are inadequate, in the same way (for example) that I'd ask questions about someone's attempts at explaining the Trinity.
I don't think he was actively choosing to exercise that power. He simply made the choice to do what was forbidden, and this is what the change consisted in.
Your "mystery" is nothing more than a failure to accept the proper meaning of terms. We have been over the terms repeatedly. You say you accept them, but then you raise objections against them. I think if you accept the terms in their proper significations the mystery would be solved for you.
Sin is an "unseen world" in one sense, but it is still a "known world" so far as moral agents are concerned. We see sin in action every day, and Scripture explicates the causes and consequences of those sins. We are not able to see the heart of another, but we are required to know our own hearts. Theology consists in part in knowing ourselves.
Misunderstood definitions aren't the problem. No matter how we define our terms, the problem remains. The problem is the sequence of events that make up a choice. In order to make sense of a choice, in order to make it intelligible, we need a motive that precedes the choice. If our motive coincides with the choice itself, the choice becomes an illusion, or, at best, a real choice (as a hypothetical construct) but a totally incomprehensible one.
You seem to have been saying that the same power of mutability Adam exercised (without being aware that it was a power of mutability he was exercising -- we agree on this point) in his choice to disobey gave him the power to create (or incline himself toward) new motives. But here again it’s the normally understood sequence of events that fails to make sense. Adam either created this motive before he made the choice to disobey, or his choice to disobey coincided with the creation of a new motive. If he created the motive before he made the choice to sin, we need to explain how his creation of a sinful motive was possible given Adam’s sinless nature. If Adam’s motive to sin coincided with his choice to sin, on the other hand, Adam’s choice becomes impossible to explain, as it would have made Adam a passive actor. We can’t make a true choice when we act on a motive that coincides with the choice itself. It’s like saying that someone who chooses to jump off a bridge doesn't have a motive for jumping until he’s already made the choice. There’s no possibility for rational reflection, and more importantly no opportunity to resist a motive, if motive and choice are simultaneous.
Your "simple" choice is anything but simple.
You use the word "possible." Mutability is the "ability" to change. Mutability is the very "possibility" you are seeking. You say you hold to mutability, but then your question requires a negation of it. Define the terms you say you accept, and hold by the definition, and your problems are solved.
The sinless person actually did become a sinful person. This means he changed. Change was obviously possible if it became a reality. If you agree that rational choice requires motive then you have to accept that the motive changed.
To be a sinful motive Adam would have been responsible for it. When you call it a sinful motive you have conceded the very thing you have denied, which is Adam's power to develop new motives. To call it "sinful" you have to accept that it was his own voluntary action for which he was morally responsible. If you deny the new motive was his own voluntary action you would have to deny the "sinfulness" of the motive.
One of the points I’ve been trying to make throughout this thread is that there’s a difference between responding to a question and answering it. When we ask why Adam chose to sin despite having no inclination to sin, and the answer we receive is that “Adam chose what he chose because he wanted what he wanted,” few of us are willing to grant that our question has been answered. It’s been responded to, yes – but answered, no. (In your last note you talked about Adam developing new motives. But why? Why would a sinless creature develop sinful motives? Your answer: Because he wanted what he wanted. That's a response, not an answer.)
Your solution to the Adam problem is like solving the problem of election by saying that God elects some people and not others because he finds a reason within himself to do so. This solution isn't a solution – it doesn’t de-mystify anything. It doesn’t explain why God elects some people and not others. In the same way, saying that Adam chose what he chose because he found a reason within himself to make his choice, even though he had no inclination for it, doesn’t suddenly vanquish the mystery. You’ve actually gone no further in answering the Adam question than any theologian has ever gone in answering the election problem (why Joe and not Stan?), and yet you consider the Adam problem to be solved.
Moderator note: Thomas, please provide a signature in accordance to board rules; see the link in mine for instructions.
I note you jump from the Adam "question" to the election "problem." It is not a "problem," though for some reason you feel a need to present it as a problem.
I haven't claimed to go beyond theologians. I would be suspicious of myself if I did. I feel no need to go beyond what has been attained in this matter. Perhaps because I don't see it as a problem. It only needs to satisfy the criteria it claims to answer. And the "will" as a voluntary power of responsible and rational choice needs no other explanation. God holds man accountable for his actions on this basis. Therefore, so far as giving an account of human action, we need go no farther. An extraneous philosophy like necessity might desire to know more, but nothing more is needed in order to give a rational account of human choice.
Theologians go so far as to show that God choosing individuals does not take away the contingency of second causes or the freedom of human choice. That is, they have explained the doctrine adequately so as to ensure human accountability remains intact, while still acknowledging the cause of God's choice remains within Himself. There is no appeal to "mystery" at the point of human action. If a man perishes he perishes because of his own sin and unbelief. It is something for which the individual is entirely responsible.
"He wanted what he wanted." Yes. That is what "will" is. The irrational theory of "indifference" claims a man can choose what he does not want. But to be a rational choice it must be something the person himself wants; and the actual choice is sufficient to manifest that it is what the person wanted. If it were otherwise no person could be held to account for his choices.
Ask Mr. Religion
Flatly Unflappable
Why is demystification necessary? For that matter when is attempting to peer behind the curtain forbidden in your view (Deut. 29:29)?
Adam was made mutable, able to sin or not to sin. A fact. Adam sinned. Another fact. From both it means something welled up within Adam as he was tempted with "hath God said?" leading him to make the wrong moral choice. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God, in the inward state and habit of the soul, as well as in the outward conduct of the life, whether by omission or commission (1 John 3:4; Romans 4:15; Romans 6:12-17; Romans 7:5-24).
Adam's lack of obedience (his sin) rests in the inward state and habit of his soul, as well as his outward conduct by commission of eating what he was commanded not to eat. Adam was the very best of us, made by God to best represent all of us. And he, our optimum representative, failed. We can know nothing more than this.
Yes it is astounding to our minds how Adam who actually had direct conversations with God in a Garden where lions were but pets, could desire to disobey His maker. It is even more astounding that one third of the angelic host, in the very heavenly presence of God, would sin. And yet another instance wherein we can know nothing more.
Having been taught daily for years by God incarnate, at the moment when they were needed most, the apostles slept away. Three times during that awful night our Lord came to them, "Stay here and watch with me", "What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation." Then we read those terrible words, "...the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners." Three times in the direct face of Our Lord's admonishments, those that sat at the feet of Our Lord for three long years failed.
Perhaps the point in all these instances is that we can get so close to the physical aspects of God—keeping the church lights burning nightly with meetings in the "sanctuary", singing about mama's favorite rocking chair, etc.—that we lose sight of the spiritual, commanding God as we sleep walk our way to peril.
Last edited:
In reading over your last several postings, it occurs to me that you seem to regard Adam’s fall as non-mysterious simply because you happen not to be interested in the “why” question. But the "why" question is precisely what most people are mystified by. The question is a huge puzzle to just about everybody. Never mind that we probably can’t ever hope to answer it.
Suppose you and I lived on the same street, and a mutual neighbor of ours, a very good man named Smith who’d never caused any trouble, one day took a gun to his neighbor’s house and killed her. Then he killed himself. The next day the police hold a press conference. But before anyone can ask the police a question, an angel from heaven appears and declares the following: “Smith made a free, rational, informed, self-aware, and sinful choice to murder his neighbor.” The angel disappears. Thanks to the angel, we can now conclude that the killing of Smith’s neighbor wasn’t a) an accident, b) the result of ignorance, c) the result of Smith taking leave of his senses, d) the result of Smith acting under someone’s else’s control, or e) self-defense.
Smith simply committed murder. But this wouldn’t answer the question most of us want an answer to. What we want to know is why Smith did what he did. Yet you, apparently, would consider the same question a waste of time, akin to asking what Smith received from his parents as a birthday gift when he was fourteen years old. And thus you'd be looking at Smith's crime in a very different way from everybody else on our street. Nobody else on the street would consent to write off the question as trivial, or academic, or irrelevant, or non-essential. Quite the opposite.
And remember that with Adam the same question contains orders of magnitude more mystery. The fact that you’re not interested in it, preferring only to talk about what Adam was capable of doing, what he actually did, what he didn't do, and what he was responsible for, doesn’t make his choice any less mysterious to the rest of us.
Why do you include yourself in there? Didn't you have recourse to external forces? Didn't you deny the testimony of consciousness? There is no room for mystery in your answer. You have denied man any genuine conscious freedom to choose.
Man likes to make mysteries to avoid accountability. They do not come into the light because their deeds are evil and they love their darkness. That is what superstition is built upon. Men depart from the truth, and then they have to come up with their own explanations in order to fill the void they have created; and what they can't explain of that void they call "mysterious." If man simply accepted the truth as God has revealed it there would be less superstition and more genuine fear of His great and dreadful name; and in that posture the true mystery would be truly adored.
Biblical accountability is a matter of great importance. On this basis the law declares men are sinners; and on this basis the gospel proclaims full and free salvation in Christ. Take away biblical accountability and you make void both law and gospel. Create a "mystery" in the place of human accountability and you will have to create a "mystery" to deal with human problems; and then you leave your Smiths with nothing but human mysteries, which self-deceived sinners willingly adopt as a refuge of lies.
In your last note you defended Adam’s accountability. In my own previous note, I suggested that defending Adam’s accountability is one of your preferred ways of filling up space on a page in lieu of addressing the question we’re asking. No one’s trying to undermine Adam’s accountability. Adam’s accountability isn’t on trial. I don’t know how to make this any clearer: We simply want to know why Adam did what he did, and if we can't answer the question, we want an acknowledgment that Adam's fall presents us with a mystery.
You're obviously not comfortable with the question we've been asking. You actually condemned the question, in your last note, as a source of superstition. So you’ve gone from dodging the question (by discussing accountability, which no one is denying) to issuing a vague warning that the question we’re asking could be a way of introducing sin into our minds.
And to make your response even more evasive, you opened your note by charging me (again) with defending necessitarianism. So to repeat – and hopefully the English language is up to the task I have in mind for it – I’m not making a case for necessitarianism. In this discussion we’re assuming that contrary choice is true and that necessitarianism is false. You've been turning our attention to necessitarianism as a diversionary tactic when you perceive the weakness of your position. Necessitarianism came up, much earlier in this thread, as a hypothetical explanation for Adam’s behavior (along with several other theories; this thread is called “Theories about Adam’s fall"). I’ve said that I’ll accept any premise you want regarding Adam’s pre-fallen state. And yet you refuse to let go of necessitarianism as a convenient villain, because attacking it is easier than defending your own highly problematic argument.
Let’s review: A) You’d rather champion Adam’s accountability, which no one is denying, than admit that you have no answer to my question (and hence that my question points to a mystery). B) You want to scare us away from the question itself by suggesting that the question could lead us into sin. C) You won’t let me agree with you on contrary choice because once I’ve accepted contrary choice you can no longer resort to attacks on necessitarianism as a way of avoiding my question.
These tactics of yours have succeeded only in making the fact of a mystery even more evident.
ThomasT,
If you would like to offer something substantial to what I have said I am more than happy to interact with it. As it stands I have no interest in following your line of reasoning beyond Scripture. The thread itself manifests that you have provided necessarian arguments in the course of this discussion. It shows quite plainly that you have tried to give rational explanation for your denials of human freedom. Your appeal to "mystery," therefore, only serves as a disguise for your own rational explanation.
Accountability means ability to be held to account. Your claim to "mystery" (which more appropriately deserves to be called "superstition" since it traces human choice back to external forces beyond man's control) removes the ability to hold man to account. You are saying no account can be given of human choices. If this is not a denial of accountability, I know not what is.
As you have not accepted the basic meanings of terms throughout this thread it might be asking too much of you to accept the basic meaning of "accountability." But believing as I do in the validity of moral discourse and in your conscious freedom to choose one thing over another, I hope you might yet take some time to consider the terms under discussion and grant them their proper meanings.
If you would like to offer something substantial to what I have said I am more than happy to interact with it. As it stands I have no interest in following your line of reasoning beyond Scripture. The thread itself manifests that you have provided necessarian arguments in the course of this discussion. It shows quite plainly that you have tried to give rational explanation for your denials of human freedom. Your appeal to "mystery," therefore, only serves as a disguise for your own rational explanation.
Accountability means ability to be held to account. Your claim to "mystery" (which more appropriately deserves to be called "superstition" since it traces human choice back to external forces beyond man's control) removes the ability to hold man to account. You are saying no account can be given of human choices. If this is not a denial of accountability, I know not what is.
As you have not accepted the basic meanings of terms throughout this thread it might be asking too much of you to accept the basic meaning of "accountability." But believing as I do in the validity of moral discourse and in your conscious freedom to choose one thing over another, I hope you might yet take some time to consider the terms under discussion and grant them their proper meanings.
You’re making the entirely unnecessary argument that Adam couldn’t have been accountable for his choice if the choice had been determined by outside forces. I agree with this argument – there’s no denying it. And yet you won’t let me agree with you. Necessitarianism is simply a theory that I hoped, earlier in this thread, to give a fair treatment to. I wanted to explore a number of theories in this thread. Necessitarianism leaves me with some grave misgivings, and I’m by no means a proponent of it.
But I can’t get you to leave necessitarianism alone; I can’t make you understand that you’re fighting a pointless battle. No one is now arguing for necessitarianism. Moreover, my previous arguments were designed merely to provoke discussion; I’ve long since abandoned them as the discussion has progressed and the earlier arguments have achieved their purpose.
But even if you think that I'm just pretending to have abandoned an argument for necessitarianism, it’s a generally accepted practice not to argue about premises once they’ve been granted. When I say that I grant your premises, and you refuse to accept my concession, you’re doing one thing only: demonstrating the weakness of your position.
As for accountability, we seem to define it the same way, more or less, despite your protestations. But I don’t make the mistake of assuming that in order for a person to be accountable, the reasons for his actions have to be known to us. When we ask why Adam sinned, we’re not doing anything other than asking why he sinned. We’re not using the question to “disguise” an argument for necessity. And we're certainly not questioning his accountability.
It seems that you’re following a carefully constructed formula when you talk about the fall of Adam. Any question your formula can’t answer is written off as a false one, an attempt to deny Scriptural truth. That this is a clear sign of weakness won’t be lost on anyone.
"The weakness of God is stronger than men." I leave you to your "strength."
Ask Mr. Religion
Flatly Unflappable
ThomasT,
What would be an answer you would take as a direct answer to your "Why did Adam sin?"
Suppose I were to answer, "Because Adam wanted to do what he knew he should not do."
Assuming you would then ask, "Well why did Adam want to do what he did?"
My answer would be something along the lines of...
"Adam was aware of God’s commandment at the moment he ate the forbidden fruit, Adam possessed the capacity and power to obey God’s preceptive will, for reasons sufficient to him (his self-determined inclinations at the moment) Adam wanted to eat the fruit, and Adam was not forced to eat the fruit (no violence done to his will). Thus, because Adam acted knowingly, willingly, with freedom of spontaneity, for reasons that were sufficient to him, with no violence done to his will, Adam was a free moral agent in his act of sin. In fact, given that sin begins in the mind’s choosing and not in the act, it can be said that Adam sinned before he took the first bite of the apple."
Perhaps you would then press me further asking, "Well, why did Adam want to eat of the forbidden fruit?"
I might say,
"Eve had eaten, and handed Adam the fruit with one bite taken. Neglecting his duty to his wife as her spiritual protector, being beguiled by the Temper's argument—"hath God said?"—an argument Adam considered valid through an internal defect in his understanding of what God had actually commanded, Adam acted on his inward inclinations.
"So in the final analysis, it seems to me the why comes down to Adam's mutability, he being made able to act contrarily to that which he ought to do. Blame attaches to actions, and actions are characterized by intentions. Adam was able to sin and able not to sin, but he did not yet have a sin nature. Adam's nature was not neutral. There was nothing in Adam's nature that in any way prompted him to sin. Yet Adam was not yet glorified and Adam had the capability of sinning (and did)."
Is any of the above within the realm of what you are looking for as an answer?
What would be an answer you would take as a direct answer to your "Why did Adam sin?"
Suppose I were to answer, "Because Adam wanted to do what he knew he should not do."
Assuming you would then ask, "Well why did Adam want to do what he did?"
My answer would be something along the lines of...
"Adam was aware of God’s commandment at the moment he ate the forbidden fruit, Adam possessed the capacity and power to obey God’s preceptive will, for reasons sufficient to him (his self-determined inclinations at the moment) Adam wanted to eat the fruit, and Adam was not forced to eat the fruit (no violence done to his will). Thus, because Adam acted knowingly, willingly, with freedom of spontaneity, for reasons that were sufficient to him, with no violence done to his will, Adam was a free moral agent in his act of sin. In fact, given that sin begins in the mind’s choosing and not in the act, it can be said that Adam sinned before he took the first bite of the apple."
Perhaps you would then press me further asking, "Well, why did Adam want to eat of the forbidden fruit?"
I might say,
"Eve had eaten, and handed Adam the fruit with one bite taken. Neglecting his duty to his wife as her spiritual protector, being beguiled by the Temper's argument—"hath God said?"—an argument Adam considered valid through an internal defect in his understanding of what God had actually commanded, Adam acted on his inward inclinations.
"So in the final analysis, it seems to me the why comes down to Adam's mutability, he being made able to act contrarily to that which he ought to do. Blame attaches to actions, and actions are characterized by intentions. Adam was able to sin and able not to sin, but he did not yet have a sin nature. Adam's nature was not neutral. There was nothing in Adam's nature that in any way prompted him to sin. Yet Adam was not yet glorified and Adam had the capability of sinning (and did)."
Is any of the above within the realm of what you are looking for as an answer?
So then your argument is God’s argument? Show me a passage in the Bible where Adam’s choice to sin, versus not to sin, is fully explained, and I’ll be happy to deny the mystery I thought Adam’s choice involved.
Whatever motive Adam had for sinning, he could have just as easily not had. Adam could have chosen to sin or not chosen to sin. He chose to sin. Why?
Most of us acknowledge that the question can’t be answered. You seem to think you’ve solved the puzzle, but you won’t share with us your solution, preferring instead to identify your (unarticulated) solution with God’s.
It doesn’t take much to say that our argument is on God’s side. It takes a bit more to support such a claim.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
