The Tree In The Center of The Garden

[dacristoy]

Um, not exactly.

Adam was like the minor who could not be prosecuted under criminal law, because he was underaged.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was like a room which made people age, so they became adults. God's instruction to Adam was not to go there.

The Fall is sometimes described as the loss of innocence.

When God visited the Garden was he not found guilty and expelled from the garden...

[footwasher]

When God visited the Garden was he not found guilty and expelled from the garden...

There are two types of instructions. One is for proper results and one is for proper compliance.

The instruction for crossing at a pedestrian crossing is given to prevent getting hit by the traffic.

I could give an instruction to my students to not use a particular route because it crosses a freeway. Pedestrians can not safely reach the destination.

I could give an instruction to my students to not cross a street except at the pedestrian crossing.

If my student disobey my first instruction, they will get injured. They have disobeyed a safety warning.

If my students disobey my second instruction, they may not get injured, but they will get punished, by the police. They have disobeyed a law.


Adam disobeyed the first type of instruction, which is an warning, advice to follow in order to avoid a definite injury.

Adam did not disobey the second type of instruction, which is a rule, a

part of a set of rules formed to in order to avoid a penalty and possible injury.

I would say that Adam ignored advice, rather than broke a code.

He did not damage anything, but he disrupted a system.

The person who steps into heavy traffic has ignored advice. He injures himself and may be others.

The person who crosses the road at a prohibited point has ignored a law. He has disrupted a system, which can cause damage to that system if left unpunished.


Clearly, Adam injured himself, made himself a creature with judgment without the body capable of obeying that judgment, making him culpable, accountable, a sinner. Where there is no law, or awareness of law, there is no transgression. His removal from the Garden was not punishment, but damage control AND correction. Adam was not in a state of sin before, but was in a state of sin after gaining knowledge of how he was a sinner. He could not be in God's presence anymore.


Bottom line, Adam disobeyed a safety warning, not a law. To be found guilty of disobeying a law, a person had to be found competent, able to differentiate good from evil. We know Adam was not competent.

[dacristoy]

Clearly, Adam injured himself, made himself a creature with judgment without the body capable of obeying that judgment, making him culpable, accountable, a sinner. Where there is no law, or awareness of law, there is no transgression. His removal from the Garden was not punishment, but damage control AND correction. Adam was not in a state of sin before, but was in a state of sin after gaining knowledge of how he was a sinner. He could not be in God's presence anymore.


Bottom line, Adam disobeyed a safety warning, not a law. To be found guilty of disobeying a law, a person had to be found competent, able to differentiate good from evil. We know Adam was not competent.

This does not have a scriptural ring of truth to it...

16 And the Lord God {warned} commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

[footwasher]

This does not have a scriptural ring of truth to it...

16 And the Lord God {warned} commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

If I command my children not to smoke cigarettes, is it a legal issue? No! it's a health issue. If I command my children not to use marijuana, is it a legal issue? Yes! It is a legal issue (in most states, anyway!). :)

So also was the instruction to Adam a health issue. Knowledge of good and evil was toxic to him, with his immature body.


New Living Translation
But the LORD God warned him, "You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden--

[Sparko]

If I command my children not to smoke cigarettes, is it a legal issue? No! it's a health issue. If I command my children not to use marijuana, is it a legal issue? Yes! It is a legal issue (in most states, anyway!). :)

So also was the instruction to Adam a health issue. Knowledge of good and evil was toxic to him, with his immature body.


New Living Translation
But the LORD God warned him, "You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden--

really?

You don't realize that God was the lawgiver? So if Adam went against his command, he was breaking a command, a law?

As for a "health issue" - it was that too since by breaking the commandment and sinning, he lost his immortality and had to live in a fallen world.

[footwasher]

really?

You don't realize that God was the lawgiver? So if Adam went against his command, he was breaking a command, a law?

As for a "health issue" - it was that too since by breaking the commandment and sinning, he lost his immortality and had to live in a fallen world.

Your father is not issuing a law when he tells you about the danger of smoking, he is telling you what harm will occur . That's why God's warning to Adam was cautionary, not prohibitive.

He lost his immunity, his ability to take shelter under the mentally incompetent clause.

This was death, the loss of immunity and the possessing of a body ruled by fleshly drives.

Through Christ's work on the cross, we have regained immunity AND are being delivered from the body of death.

Interestingly, the Jewish sages teach that Adam lost out because of impatience. If he had waited till the Sabbath, God would have worked with him to subdue Creation, including his body, and then given him the gift of knowledge of good and evil.

[Sparko]

Your father is not issuing a law when he tells you about the danger of smoking, he is telling you what harm will occur . That's why God's warning to Adam was cautionary, not prohibitive.

He lost his immunity, his ability to take shelter under the mentally incompetent clause.

This was death, the loss of immunity and the possessing of a body ruled by fleshly drives.

Through Christ's work on the cross, we have regained immunity AND are being delivered from the body of death.

Interestingly, the Jewish sages teach that Adam lost out because of impatience. If he had waited till the Sabbath, God would have worked with him to subdue Creation, including his body, and then given him the gift of knowledge of good and evil.

simply repeating yourself doesn't make you right.

It was a command not to eat from the tree. God was not just giving him a cautionary warning. He commanded that they not eat from the tree and then told them the consequences. If a Judge told you to not kill someone, or you would end up in prison, then the "don't kill someone" would be a command and not just a warning.

God was the lawgiver so when he gave a command, it was a law. Not just a "hey dude, that is bad for you, be careful"

[bling]

Genesis 2: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Interested in discussing the Tree of Life that God placed in the center of the Garden of Eden.

What does scripture indicate was God’s purpose.
What effect did it have on God’s creation.
How important was God’s placement in the garden.
What did God’s prohibition of eating from the tree establish
Was the tree physical different from the other trees of it’s kind?

There are always lots of different options that are all good (this would be like Adam and Eve in the Garden). We do not have to do the bad thing, since there are good things just as ‘rewarding”.

Some of the desire to eat from the tree of knowledge is the fact that you can’t (which is like sinning today).

Adam, without the knowledge of Good and evil, would still have knowledge of right and wrong, so disobedience would still be a sin.

There is a ton of stuff we learn from the Garden scenario and there are very logical reasons why: the tree is there, Eve would eat, Adam would eat, satan is there, there is no protection around the tree, and God allowed all this to happen.

As far as predestination and free will: both do exist in different situations and different times, but man cannot be predestined (foreordained) to make a particular choice and still call it a free will choice by man. God can have foreknowledge of these choices, without effecting man’s free will in the choice. Only a few choices need to be truly free will.

[footwasher]

simply repeating yourself doesn't make you right.

It was a command not to eat from the tree. God was not just giving him a cautionary warning. He commanded that they not eat from the tree and then told them the consequences. If a Judge told you to not kill someone, or you would end up in prison, then the "don't kill someone" would be a command and not just a warning.

God was the lawgiver so when he gave a command, it was a law. Not just a "hey dude, that is bad for you, be careful"

Simply repeating yourself doesn't make you right!

Your logic falls apart because the judge's instruction was not a warning against injury, it was a warning against disrupting a system, a penal code.

God warned Adam not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil because he would not be able to handle it.

Adam ate and knew that he was a person of uncleanness, who could not be in God's presence, because he could not cleanse himself from all unrighteousness. What a predicament! He needed to be near God to be cleansed of unrighteousness and he couldn't be near to God because of his unrighteousness, because eating the fruit had made him able to differentiate good from evil and made him culpable!

That was the injury.

Similar to your father telling you not to get into the habit of smoking because it would lead to injury to your health. You WOULD get sick. But you would not be a law breaker.

It is not like your father telling you not to smoke marijuana because it was against the law. You MAY get arrested, but you know that there are many people who have smoked marijuana but have not been arrested. However, they have become lawbreakers.


Lawbreaking happens when there is transgression. But transgression does not happen if the transgresser is mentally incompetent, as in the case of minors and those who are insane.

Adam was mentally incompetent: he could not differentiate good from evil.



http://www.teenadvocatesusa.org/10reasonswhy.html

Quote
4. Psychological research confirms what every parent knows: children, including teenagers, act more irrationally and immaturely than adults. Studies further confirm that stressful situations only heighten the risk that emotion, rather than rational thought, will guide the choices children make. The Supreme Court recognized just this! In Roper v. Simmons, Justice Kennedy wrote: "any parent knows" and "scientific and sociological studies ... tend to confirm "that children possess a "lack of maturity" .. an underdeveloped sense of responsibility .. [and take] impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions."

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1225

Quote
Adolescence: Akin to Mental Retardation?

The human brain took center stage in 2002 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the death penalty for mentally retarded persons. In that case (Atkins v. Virginia), six of the nine justices agreed that executing a convict with limited intellectual capacity, Daryl Atkins, would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Instructing the state of Virginia to forgo the death penalty in such cases, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: "Because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses, [mentally retarded persons] do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct."

When the case of Christopher Simmons, who committed murder at age 17, comes before the same justices in October, says law professor Steven Drizin of Northwestern University in Chicago, defense attorneys hope to equate juvenile culpability to that of mentally retarded persons. "Juveniles function very much like the mentally retarded. The biggest similarity is their cognitive deficit. [Teens] may be highly functioning, but that doesn't make them capable of making good decisions," he says. Brain and behavior research supports that contention, argues Drizin, who represents the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern on the amicus curiae brief for Simmons. The "standard of decency" today is that teens do not deserve the same extreme punishment as adults.


____________________

These are old articles. New data confirms, much more, the theories held by the experts in the above.

[Cerebrum123]

Adam wasn't a little kid, and it's clear he was rather intelligent. He knew what it meant for Eve to be his wife("bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh" comment), he knew to name the animals, and he would have known what death was. In Romans it's explicitly said that Adam sinned.

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

Adam broke a command, plain and simple.

[footwasher]

Adam wasn't a little kid, and it's clear he was rather intelligent. He knew what it meant for Eve to be his wife("bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh" comment), he knew to name the animals, and he would have known what death was. In Romans it's explicitly said that Adam sinned.

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

Adam broke a command, plain and simple.

The text says they knew good and evil only after eating the fruit. That means they were worse than little children in terms of capacity to make responsible decisions.

[Cerebrum123]

The text says they knew good and evil only after eating the fruit. That means they were worse than little children in terms of capacity to make responsible decisions.

The word "know" in Hebrew has different connotations than in English. Your dismissal of the specific language in Romans is telling though.

[footwasher]

The word "know" in Hebrew has different connotations than in English. Your dismissal of the specific language in Romans is telling though.

How can you sin, do evil, when you don't have the ability to know good from evil?

[Cerebrum123]

How can you sin, do evil, when you don't have the ability to know good from evil?

Address the evidence that Adam sinned. Adam broke God's law, and he knew said law. Sin is lawlessness, so Adam sinned. It's also explicitly stated that Adam is the first to sin in Romans.

[footwasher]

Address the evidence that Adam sinned. Adam broke God's law, and he knew said law. Sin is lawlessness, so Adam sinned. It's also explicitly stated that Adam is the first to sin in Romans.

Romans was written to those under the law.

Romans 3:19Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;

They were being TAUGHT how sin was FORMED. Sin did not exist before the fall. Where there is no law there is no transgression.

Romans 4:15for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.