I was listening to a radio call in show and an interesting question was asked. I'll try to relate it.
The caller was asking about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How could eating fruit give you knowledge? Was there a chemical substance that caused a reaction? Or was it the act of rebellion that caused the knowledge of good and evil?
What think ye?
metaphorical.
look what we've done with science.
God created the stars and firmament of heaven, He created our sun, that warms us, and provides food via crops.
and in December 1942, we began the first process to mimic the reality of the sun, and in 1945, we weaponized it, we mimiced the Power of God by recreating the heat of the sun for a millisecond over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
was that good? or was that evil?...or was it both?
we saved millions of lives by crushing those two cities with the heat of a faux sun, but in the process we let an evil genie out of the bottle, an unholy spirit.
the way i read it, God was asking, "do you want to know what I know? If you don't, don't eat the fruit of this tree. But they did....and we know good and we know evil.
good is the loving evening kiss to a beloved offspring.
evil is putting that offspring in a car and driving it into a lake.
But in the end, who can divine the Mind of God?
Perhaps it is both the fruit and the action. Without the fruit there would be nothing to act upon and without the disobedient action the fruit was harmless. :)
In His service,
preacheraflame
I was wondering how this effects "sin entering the world."
If we say that the act of eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil is metaphorical, what does that do to the tree of life? If they would have ate of it, what would that have done and why?
EDIT: When I use the word "metaphorical" I'm not meaning it wasn't real, but that eating the fruit in and of itself is (or isn't) what actually gave the knowledge. I think that is the same way Bartle meant it. Mainly I used the word because he did.
I think that the "knowledge of good and evil" refers to deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil.
In other words, taking ourselves out of God's hands and choosing our own subjective "right and wrong".
In prisons, sex offenders, especially paedophiles, have to be kept apart from other prisoners because they would be likely to get lynched.
A violent criminal who thinks nothing of shooting someone who annoys him may be kind to animals.
Christians often justify malicious gossip because it isn't breaking the more obvious of the 10 Commandments.
Maybe the results of eating that fruit is summed up with "I DID IT MY WAY"!
I think the results of eating the fruit probably came from disobedience rather than anything in the fruit as such.
Jeannette
I think according to James 1:14-15 I would have to agree...
--- preacheraflame
What happens when we believe That Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We become new creatures because we believed. Now we are son's of God.
When Adam believed, he became a son of Satan. Adam was innocent and new no wrong. A man who knows no wrong can not commit wrong. Adam had no nature because he had not believed anyone except God. When he chose to believe Satan, Adam's nature had been chosen, now he would know what evil was and what good was.
We now have Christ in us. Where, before by believing Satan, Adam became sin and death just like his father satan and so we were also.
With Christ in us, through the faith of the Son of God we believe God instead of Satan, and we now have the nature of Our Father God, through the "Faith of the Son of God", Gal 2: 16-21.
Now, "if a man knows to do good and doesn't do it to him it is sin". James 4:17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
It's the believing that brought death and sin, and it's believing that saves us and sets us free from death and sin.
In Christ: Phillip
Preach asked
In a distant way, I've been thinking about this, and your question is provoking me to put something into words.....Knowledge: The fruit or the action?
In a previous thread on something else (have no idea what exactly, though someone else might remember), I posted about when God said 'Let there be light' and He [i]created
I mention this because we are apt to forget that while God Himself is Good, (Luke 18:19) He created evil. (Isa 45:7) And the good that we do, is, as it were, [i]created[b]Good
My experience of sin is, that when I [i]chose
On the point of [u]ignorance
So, to answer your question more directly, I believe the 'knowledge of good and evil' is a result of the death they died that day. The fact that they didn't just drop down dead physically, but had to live with this altered consciousness of reality, whereby they were excluded from the heaven of rest and the tree of Life, [i]this
Without doubt, the tree of Life had the power to give Adam and Eve to 'live forever'. This is really the extreme opposite of the 'death' which they died, spiritually.
It is also interesting that while Adam is credited with bringing sin and death to humanity, which is outworked physically, immediately after God had spoken to them and the serpent, we find this:
Genesis 3:20
And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all [u]living.
In a previous thread, which began to discuss the blood of Christ, and latterly the Virgin Birth, Phillip posted this link. It may not seem entirely relevant to the original question, but, it clearly touches on the matter of whether the fruit itself [i]mattered
I read the first chapter, and found it interesting. Also, necessary to grapple with these ideas, as my son is scientifically minded, and real facts require acknowledgement, as well as being able to exclude, or include them in one's theology.
PreachParsly wrote:
The caller was asking about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How could eating fruit give you knowledge? Was there a chemical substance that caused a reaction? Or was it the act of rebellion that caused the knowledge of good and evil?What think ye?
If it was the command, did they have knowledge of good and evil before they ate of it? The command was given before they ate.
PreachParsly wrote:
Exactly.If it was the command, did they have knowledge of good and evil before they ate of it? The command was given before they ate.
Knowing, in that they experienced evil by chooseing to disobey.
[b]Genesis 3:5
Compaire the two words for knowledge in the above verse and for the name of the Tree.
God already lost the son of the morning. In creating Adam and Eve, there was a test. Don't eat of the tree. With Adam completely innocent he really did not know what was evil or for that matter what was good, he had nothing to be able to assimilate the difference, he only new God said don't eat. When Adam saw eve eat and not die, die, what was that, he did not have that knowledge either. So when he saw nothing happen to Eve and she offered it to him, he did eat. Not even thinking about what God had said, unless Eve being deceived and telling Satan that they were not supposed to eat or they would surely die, Adam heard her and the deception and lies of Satan, he just ate.
Then what happened? I feel sorry for Adam. He was created a full grown man, didn't see anything that made him feel comfortable in the animals, so God preformed surgery on him and when he woke up there was a woman beside him, he did not even know what she was, but she took over immediately and made her own decision and ate by being deceived, but he was excited, wowman, then he ate the stupid fruit and was kicked out of his home, into the wilderness, then eve being a typical woman, she gave birth to children, Adam in about 2 weeks went through a whole lot. Then the training began and is still going on today. With the knowledge of right and wrong we can now choose either Satan or Jesus Christ. In believing that Christ is the Son of God, we can now be born again and start all over, renewing our minds, for we now have the Mind of Christ. We now have The Holy Spirit of God, which Adam knew not. We are destined to go back to the Father's house and be what He wanted in the first place, a Son that loved Him the way He wanted to be loved. We are that son by the only Begotten Son Jesus Christ the only one that loves Him as He wants. We are different as the flowers of the fields but we are that son by the Son.
In Christ: Phillip
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