Was Adam sinless before the Fall?

[jriccitelli]

The snake was not an atonement. God 'accepted' their 'faith' in the sacrifices, but God did demand, tell us He would, and did present a real actual atonement for sins, once and for all. Are you thinking all the demonstrations and types of Christ were the same thing as Christ Himself? Was Jesus the actual atonement, or not?

[darinhouston]

Atonement or not, they placed their faith in God to save them and it was something "else" that was the provision on which they relied. Of course, I don't think they're the same thing as Christ. But, you prove too much with your assertions. The "same" or not, types are useful here. I'm not sure what you're getting at by your final question. What about the Yom Kippur atonement? They placed their faith in God when they provided the sacrifice. It wasn't the sacrifice that needed to be trustworth, it was God.


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[Homer]

Darin,

That's weird. You just said what I was going to say before I could say it.

[Homer]

Which scenario would lead us to admire Jesus more:

1. Jesus experienced no desire to do anything sinful and could not possibly have sinned.

2. Jesus experienced desire to do things that are sinful but always overcame those desires and did His Father's will.






Doesn't seem like much of a question Homer? Obviously #2

I agree. If #1 is true it does not seem that Jesus could be an example to us.

[dizerner]

Jesus said to be perfect. His example was not imperfection. He is our perfection. We make a big mistake when we lower Jesus from his Divinity and make him a struggling sinner that overcomes. He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Bright and Morning Star. He carried the Shekinah glory of Almighty God in a tent of flesh and bones. It hurts my heart to hear Jesus made into a struggling sinner that overcame. Jesus never had a sinful desire in his life. His greatest temptation, was politely asking the Father if there was another way, as he literally dropped blood from his skin. Is that casting a vain eye on the pleasures of sin? Is that displaying that little sinful tug we all feel, Jesus wishing he could have pleasure or wealth? This God-man gave up pleasures and wealth in heaven none of us could even dream of. He was crying loudly with tears and groans. Is that a man who feels the pull of Satan's lure? No, it's a perfect intercessor in complete perfection, in utter spiritual purity and godliness, laying down his soul as an offering for sin, shedding his perfect and pure blood to cleanse our own hearts contaminated and polluted by sin's desires. Stop bringing Christ down to your level, do not trust in a man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. The breath of Christ brings us the Holy Spirit. Stop dragging down Christ to the level of sinful man! I will ascribe righteousness to my Maker! By him all things were created! Amen and amen.

[morbo3000]

Fascinating question. I'm late to the game.

I just re-read Genesis 1-3 and tried to mentally strip myself of Paul's interpretations. Genesis seems ambivalent about Adam's "moral standing." Both before and after he ate the fruit.

Here are some things that are different if we read without Paul (as the Jews might have.)

- We lose the concept of YHWH's moral perfection. For example: YHWH made the serpent, who was cunning. We can heap gobs of theology from later texts, and history on top of this text about the creation of evil, and God's culpability. But standing by itself, YHWH is not morally perfect by our definitions. He made the serpent. The serpent was the problem.
- Which means that Adam's relationship to YHWH is morally ambivalent. His sinless perfection is not part of the story. The story is not trying to explain how Adam went from being perfect to being sinful. It's trying to explain "how did we get in this mess..." i.e. the curses. If you notice, none of the curses impact the morality of Adam and Eve. They aren't cursed to lie. They aren't cursed to commit adultery. They are cursed to have hardship.
- We lose the idea that man was eternal. Verse 17 says that "on the day you eat it you will surely die." That doesn't mean he wouldn't have died in the first place. I will die eventually. But if I eat rat poison, "on the day I eat it, I will surely die."
- We lose the idea that man was separated from God as a result of eating the fruit. He was only taken out of Eden. The Pentateuch is full of God interacting with humankind. I noticed for the first time today that God "sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground _from which he was taken_." He was taken back to the ground He was taken from. Which must not have been Eden. (I don't want to make too much of this. I doubt I could sustain it against heavy exegetical attack.) But man did not lose the accessibility of God in the fall.

Genesis, as an ancient original story, was answering the questions they were asking. And they were not asking about original sin. If we assume that YHWH was the author of this story, apparently he wasn't asking about it either.

Paul then makes use of Genesis to answer questions the 1st century Christians were asking. It is only in this context that he extracts the idea of original sin out of Genesis, which did not contain it in the first place.

My conclusion is that Genesis 3 is morally ambiguous about ultimate sin and sinlessness. That's simply not the point. So we can't say if Adam was sinful or not before he ate the fruit.

[TheEditor]

Hi Dizerner,

As much as I appreciate the passion in your poetic appeal, it seems you are objecting to something that no one is doing. Who is it that is 'making Jesus a struggling sinner?"

Jesus never had a sinful desire in his life. His greatest temptation, was politely asking the Father if there was another way, as he literally dropped blood from his skin. Is that casting a vain eye on the pleasures of sin? Is that displaying that little sinful tug we all feel, Jesus wishing he could have pleasure or wealth? This God-man gave up pleasures and wealth in heaven none of us could even dream of. He was crying loudly with tears and groans. Is that a man who feels the pull of Satan's lure? No, it's a perfect intercessor in complete perfection, in utter spiritual purity and godliness, laying down his soul as an offering for sin, shedding his perfect and pure blood to cleanse our own hearts contaminated and polluted by sin's desires. Stop bringing Christ down to your level, do not trust in a man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. The breath of Christ brings us the Holy Spirit. Stop dragging down Christ to the level of sinful man! I will ascribe righteousness to my Maker! By him all things were created! Amen and amen.

"For he is really not assisting angels at all, but he is assisting Abraham’s seed.  Consequently he was obliged to become like his “brothers” in all respects, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, in order to offer propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the people.  For in that he himself has suffered when being put to the test, he is able to come to the aid of those who are being put to the test." (Hebrews 2:16-18).

We may as well conclude that Jesus didn't feel the lash. Or get hungry, or grow tired. He experienced all of these things because he was a man. A perfect man, but a man with physical attributes and needs. Why did Satan wait until Jesus fasted to tempt him with food? Why did Jesus need ministering to from angels after Satan's temptation?

I am not suggesting that Christ was tempted to be a whore-monger, or a glutton or drunkard. But he did drink wine at the Passover, and though it may have been weaker wine than we are used to, the Jews routinely drank 3 cups at Passover and Jesus introduced a 4th at the Last Supper. Should we assume the wine had zero effect on him? Jesus probably could have understood after drinking wine how an imperfect man might wind up relying on such a thing; how a man may be tempted to use it in excess. He did refuse the drugged wine while on the cross, probably because he wanted to have all his faculties when he was suffering; no short-cuts. Jesus understood hunger, pain, sorrow, the whole gamut of human emotion. Yes, he can sympathize.

I really can't see how this needs to be a choice between a "God-man" with no human sensibilities, or a wine-bibber that fancies harlots. Are these the only two options you see Dizerner?

Regards, Brenden.

[Singalphile]

morbo3000,

I like your approach, and I agree with some of your thoughts. I'm not sure about the conclusion, though.

The story does look to me like it intends to answer the question, as you put it, "How did we get in this mess?" (I agree that that the modern "original sin" concept was probably not on anyone's mind.) And the answer, at least in part, is because of sin. It is the account of how mankind (or the first man and woman) committed a sin and thus came to have the knowledge of good and evil.

It seems like an unnecessary speculation to suppose that Adam and Eve committed sin(s) prior to to the event described in the account, which by all appearances, intends to tell us about their first disobedience and its consequences.

I know you could be thinking of a different definition of "sinful" (and I'm not sure what you mean by "ultimate sin"). Or perhaps you take the whole account as a metaphorical or symbolic fable such that the story isn't really about specific human beings. I think I could see more of where you're coming from in that case.

[morbo3000]

morbo3000,

I like your approach, and I agree with some of your thoughts. I'm not sure about the conclusion, though.

Thanks Singalphile! I was rambling a bit, so nice that I made some sense.

I know you could be thinking of a different definition of "sinful" (and I'm not sure what you mean by "ultimate sin"). Or perhaps you take the whole account as a metaphorical or symbolic fable such that the story isn't really about specific human beings. I think I could see more of where you're coming from in that case.

It's hard to find words to formulate what I'm saying. It's obviously influenced by scholars with far more prestige and eloquence than me. And unfortunately, the more I type, I sound verbose and over-explaining.

I am not taking a stance in whether Genesis is history or myth. I am trying to understand what it is saying by looking at the themes and character descriptions compared to other origin stories of that time. History tells part of its story in how it tells the story. What it includes, and what it excludes.

With that in mind, we don't have any moral backstory on YWHW or Adam. We only know of them what we get from that specific passage. We have a god with at least some questionable character (he created a cunning animal.) And we have a created man. The entire story is missing the holiness of God <-> sinfulness of man motif. Neither YHWH nor Adam need to be perfect (sinless) before the story is told for it to make sense. It works either way.

Now we see that the story is about a god who creates man, tells him not to do something, he goes ahead and does it anyway, and they are punished. But this is not different at all, in terms of literary elements to the instructions of Zeus or any other gods to humans. The myths don't endow humans with inherited guilt as a consequence of their rebellion against the gods. And neither does Genesis. Humans are humans. Sometimes they do what they are told. Sometimes they don't.

So, from a literary sense, "sin" is missing from Genesis because Adam does not go from a sinless state to a sinful state. He goes from a "don't do this" state to a "he did this" state. Everything else we have is reading theological language back into the story. And this is true whether or not the story is historical or myth.

[dizerner]

With that in mind, we don't have any moral backstory on YWHW or Adam. We have a god with at least some questionable character (he created a cunning animal.) And we have a created man. The entire story is missing the holiness of God <-> sinfulness of man motif.... So, from a literary sense, "sin" is missing from Genesis because Adam does not go from a sinless state to a sinful state.

Allowing a test does not make God's character "questionable." We do have a moral backstory of sweet fellowship and one very stern command. The story is not missing sin or holiness. We have a command, and a specific result of that command (death). We have exclusion from the direct presence of God due to disobedience and even the cherubim (guardians of the very holiness of God) are there with swords of fire, and a tree of life representing God's glory (that they now fall short of). After the sin the humans exhibit a new shame, and a new need to relate to God differently than they ever have. I think you have a very low view of inspiration that may be coloring your perspective. Yes, the fact that all died in Adam when he died is given later, but there is definitely seen abiding effects of sin, and the descendants need to relate to God through sacrifice and are also excluded from the tree of life.