Thoughts on Gen. 3:5

[RBerman]

It is my understanding that both man and God have free will. The difference between us is that God has reached a state of knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence that he knows with a perfect knowledge that choosing wrong over right is destructive to oneself as well as others.

Interesting. Some of the other Mormons who post here regularly seem at best ambivalent about the Process Theology taught in the the King Follett discourse, but you seem pretty committed to it. In your estimation, how popular is your strain of belief within the LDS?

[onefour1]

Not sure how popular it is. I have never taken a poll. However, I am willing to logically show you why I believe the way I do.

[RBerman]

Not sure how popular it is. I have never taken a poll. However, I am willing to logically show you why I believe the way I do.

That sounds like a topic for an other thread. But if you would like to discuss what the Bible says about that topic, then start another thread in this subforum.

[ttruscott]

Actually all of man is self existent because the elements are eternal as well. By self existent I mean that our intelligence has always existed and the matter that was organized to form our spirits and bodies are eternal as well. They have existed for ever and ever.

Because God could not create the intelligence of man from nothing but only took those intelligences and gave them a spirit and then a body made from matter that already existed eternally, man in his created state is not perfect.

Why are the eternal elements of man imperfect but the eternal elements of GOD are not? Why could God not create the intelligence of man from nothing?

The difference between us is that God has reached a state of knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence that he knows with a perfect knowledge that choosing wrong over right is destructive to oneself as well as others. Even though God has more free will to do things, he will never do evil because he is of the highest of characters possible.

You have just proven that at one time GOD was eternal but not perfect but became perfect (ie God has reached a state of knowledge) then assembled other eternal parts lying around into imperfect beings to allow them to become perfect.

If man was perfect before the fall, then why did he fall? God is a perfect being and he doesn't fall.

Perfect to you seems to mean unable to sin but to me it means completely able to fulfill GOD's plan for our creation...ie we were intelligent, creative and fully emotionally capable and morally we were ingenuously innocent, a moral tabla rasa so to speak, created fully able to make true free will choices to accept or reject HIS plan for their creation, fully capable of understanding the consequences of each choice and fully capable of deciding without proof which option they wanted, by hope, ie by faith. Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

This allowed us to be able to make true free will decisions put to us by god who had hidden his divinity so as to not coerce our choice, decisions whether to accept HIS plan for our creation or whether to go our own way, ie the kind of reality we hoped to have by making this choice:

1. a life with a GOD who was perfect and created us to join HIM in that perfection and in loving holy communion forever but who would damn anyone who became HIS eternal enemy by rejecting HIS plan for their creation,
or
2. a life in which we were just as important as the false god, better in fact because we were not liars about ourselves. A life in which we are our own GOD and our laws and our love is the epitomé of perfection. A life in which we bow to no one.
or
3. a life with any god other than the trinity named Jehovah in any other nature of reality they suggested...

And since free will is what it is, this choice allowed the full spectrum of options to become reality from pure holy elect angels to the most evil dedicated eternal enemies of GOD.

And that is how a perfect being can fall.... May I ask why your definition of man's fall does not include this type of free will decision making?

I believe that an eternally perfect GOD is superior.

I believe that creation ex nihilo is a superior method.

I believe that making us perfect at creation is a superior method...the reason I reject the normal meaning of Adamic sin.

Faith is hope without proof and I put my faith in these superior things because if I could choose as a created being which reality to live in, it would be this one....AND I think I was brought to this understanding of reality and to my faith in it by the Holy Spirit of GOD Almighty.

[onefour1]

Why are the eternal elements of man imperfect but the eternal elements of GOD are not? Why could God not create the intelligence of man from nothing?

The elements are eternal. Intelligence is eternal. When God gave birth to our spirits, these spirits were immortal as well. But this life is different. God created a situation in which man would fall. This fall was set to bring about a fallen condition where the organizaiton of the matter would be subject to dissolution. Even though our bodies decay as well as other organized things in this existence, it is not eternally so. We all will be resurrected to an immortal state when this world comes to an end. The earth will become a celestial sphere and death and dissolution will no longer exist. Thus the elements will eventually be made perfect in their organization. They will be as immortal again as Gods elements are in his organization. But the intelligence, if it does not progress, will not reach the perfection that God's intelligence has reached.

You have just proven that at one time GOD was eternal but not perfect but became perfect (ie God has reached a state of knowledge) then assembled other eternal parts lying around into imperfect beings to allow them to become perfect.

That is correct. We believe the the statement that as man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. The imperfect part is the intelligence that needs to progress.

Perfect to you seems to mean unable to sin but to me it means completely able to fulfill GOD's plan for our creation...ie we were intelligent, creative and fully emotionally capable and morally we were ingenuously innocent, a moral tabla rasa so to speak, created fully able to make true free will choices to accept or reject HIS plan for their creation, fully capable of understanding the consequences of each choice and fully capable of deciding without proof which option they wanted, by hope, ie by faith. Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Perfection is not the inability to sin but the strength, knowledge, and understanding to choose not to sin. God is perfect in this way. I believe that man had a good understanding of God in the pre-mortal existence but was given the tabula rasa when he was placed in the garden of Eden to cause them to forget their premortal state. If they were not given the tabula rasa, they would not have made the choice to fall. How does this tabula rasa make one who has it capable of understanding consequences of their choices and fully capable of deciding without proof which option was best?

This allowed us to be able to make true free will decisions put to us by god who had hidden his divinity so as to not coerce our choice, decisions whether to accept HIS plan for our creation or whether to go our own way, ie the kind of reality we hoped to have by making this choice:

1. a life with a GOD who was perfect and created us to join HIM in that perfection and in loving holy communion forever but who would damn anyone who became HIS eternal enemy by rejecting HIS plan for their creation,
or
2. a life in which we were just as important as the false god, better in fact because we were not liars about ourselves. A life in which we are our own GOD and our laws and our love is the epitomé of perfection. A life in which we bow to no one.
or
3. a life with any god other than the trinity named Jehovah in any other nature of reality they suggested...

And since free will is what it is, this choice allowed the full spectrum of options to become reality from pure holy elect angels to the most evil dedicated eternal enemies of GOD.

And that is how a perfect being can fall.... May I ask why your definition of man's fall does not include this type of free will decision making?

From my perspective, I don't think that with a clean slate, they are able to make completely informed decisions. God commanded Adam and Eve to not partake of the forbidden fruit and told them that in the day they eat thereof they shall surely die. But because of the clean slate, Adam and Eve did not know what it was to die. They had never experienced it and had no memory of previous worlds they might have witnessed. But they did see God and know that he was great. It was extremely tempting when the devil told them they would not die but become as God. Death did not have much weight but the chance to become like God was very tempting. Thus the fall came about with influence on both sides of the fence. God knew Adam and Eve would fall. It was his plan. And just as Satan thought he was thwarting God's plan when he was successful in having Jesus cruxified, he also thought he was being successful in getting Adam and Eve to fall. In reality God used him to bring about his righteous purposes. The tabula rasa (clean slate) helped bring these conditions about but also allowed man to experience this life and all the good and evil within it.

I believe that an eternally perfect GOD is superior.

I believe that creation ex nihilo is a superior method.

just because we can think up a superior situation, it doesn't mean it is a reality. For example, it would be superior to have a God who has absolute power. By absolute power, I mean that he can do anything imaginable. But that seems to contradict logic. Under such a condition, such a God could create a self existent being. But that is absurd. You cannot create something that has always existed. So even though we think something is superior, it may not be logically possible. I have a problem with a God who existed etenally and creates ex nihilo. At some point in his existence, nothing except himself existed. Then at some point, he created his first creation. Since he has existed for an infinite amount of eternity before creating his first creation, why did he wait so long? He must have been alone for a very, very long time. LDS thought suggests that everything in existence has existed forever. It may not have existed in the organized state it is in now but the elements are eternal.

I believe that making us perfect at creation is a superior method...the reason I reject the normal meaning of Adamic sin.

I don't understand how you can believe that Adam or Eve were perfect when they made imperfect choices.

Faith is hope without proof and I put my faith in these superior things because if I could choose as a created being which reality to live in, it would be this one....AND I think I was brought to this understanding of reality and to my faith in it by the Holy Spirit of GOD Almighty.

Well, thanks for sharing your belief system with me. Even though I don't fully comprehend it, I appreciate free agency and the ability we all have to choose our own. What I think you are saying is that the tabula rasa is what gives us the most amount of freedom of choice. What I didn't understand is how this allows you to make informed decisions. I guess what you might be saying is that your decsions are pure in that it allows you to choose without outside influence. I don't see the story of the fall to be wiithout outside influence however. Anyway the conversation is fun for me.

[RBerman]

just because we can think up a superior situation, it doesn't mean it is a reality. For example, it would be superior to have a God who has absolute power. By absolute power, I mean that he can do anything imaginable. But that seems to contradict logic. Under such a condition, such a God could create a self existent being. But that is absurd. You cannot create something that has always existed. So even though we think something is superior, it may not be logically possible. I have a problem with a God who existed etenally and creates ex nihilo. At some point in his existence, nothing except himself existed. Then at some point, he created his first creation. Since he has existed for an infinite amount of eternity before creating his first creation, why did he wait so long? He must have been alone for a very, very long time. LDS thought suggests that everything in existence has existed forever. It may not have existed in the organized state it is in now but the elements are eternal.

All you're really doing is that the rules of language allow us to construct logically contradictory strings of words like "icy hot" or "long short" or "square circle" or "created an eternal being." You're not really saying anything about God; you're really butting up against a problem in language itself, that we can use it to say nonsensical things like, "O freddled gruntbuggly, thy nacturations are to me as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee." The phrase "infinite amount of eternity" is a similarly nonsense phrase, even though the individual words in it do have meaning.

[ttruscott]

I believe that making us perfect at creation is a superior method...the reason I reject the normal meaning of Adamic sin.

I don't understand how you can believe that Adam or Eve were perfect when they made imperfect choices.

I thought we did this already...a created being is perfect because it is capable of making a true free will decision to become self chosen as ultimate good or ultimate evil or anywhere inbetween,and the choice to become evil is a perfect choice if it is without coercion (or there can be no guilt) and with full knowledge of the consequences, (or it is not a choice but a guess).

[Lots of detail at http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...-Existence%29]

The reason for the true free will choice was to be able to fulfill GOD's plan for our creation and our perfection when created also resided in us being perfectly made to be able to fulfill HIS plan, by our true free will choice.

The ability to make a true free will decision to fulfill GOD's plan for HIS creaton of us denotes our perfection of being. The rejection of that purpose, making the spirit forever incapable of fulfilling HIS plan is therefore the definition of sin and evil, becoming eternally imperfect, unredeemable and cast off forever outside the will of GOD.

Now this applies to Adam and Eve but not in the garden where they were obviously already sinners, (for instance: naked and crafty/subtil are from the same root word and can be interchanged in English...Adam and Eve were crafty and the serpent was naked.).

The theology I confess is Pre-Conception Existence theololgy which suggests our perfection was pre-earth in the spirit world, before the creation of the physical universe, where we were created perfect and had our true free will choices separating us into either HIS elect church or HIS eternal enemies and HIS elect separated into the faithful and the the sinful elect, outside the will of GOD but not outside HIS love nor HIs promise of election.

The earth was created as a reform school for the fallen sinful elect to be brought to redemption by the cross and sanctification by the Spirit.

Since it is obvious that people are born sinners, a reason had to be found. The rejection of Adam and Eve (and therefore us too) arriving as sinners in the garden, another reason for our sinfulness and enslavement to sin from birth had to be found and so was tagged onto Adam's garden sin. But being born a sinner in Adam goes against both the idea that we are created perfect and the idea that we are punished only for our own sin, no one else's sin.

For these reasons (and the foolish non-free will that people on earth accept as free will) I have turned from the orthodox view to the pre-earth solution.

Peace, Ted