Dispatches from the Forum: Death Before the Fall

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

I don’t see where the text “judges billions of their descendants.” Adam and Eve are tossed out of the Garden, to live as mortal beings. God doesn’t – in the story – blame any descendant for anything. He blames only Adam, Eve, and the serpent. If you are referring to the idea that all human beings are under the power of Sin and therefore rightly consigned to eternal flames in the afterlife because of what Adam and Eve did, there isn’t even a hint of that idea in the Garden story.

As usual, @Eddie, what you think is hinted and what I think is hinted is vastly different. Nobody can read the story of Eden and not come away with a judgment on all of future humanity…

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

You have responded to one point of about twenty that I made about the Garden story. Your response to the other points is … ?

@Eddie,

But you devote So Much of Your Time in wrong-headed analysis!

You’ve got a lot of chutzpah to tell me I owe you more of a response when you write this balderdash:

“I don’t see where the text “judges billions of their descendants.” Adam and Eve are tossed out of the Garden, to live as mortal beings. God doesn’t – in the story – blame any descendant for anything.”

A more careful treatment would have been something like:

“There is no explicit reference to future generations.” - - yet grudgingly followed by a hesitant and halting admission that the expulsion of the first two humans would have a permanent effect on all humanity - -

**Gen 3:17 **
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast … eaten of the tree . . . cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. . .

• • And finally would come your acknowledging that God cannot talk about the future generations of the serpent and of Eve without establishing a context of despair for all the children of humanity!

**Gen 3:15 **
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise [their] heel[s].

**Gen 3:16 **
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. . .

Frankly, Eddie, I’ve come to expect that you reject reasonable things that people say … because you find it fairly exhilarating.

I threw you a bone, Eddie. And you smothered it in muck. It is not I who owe you an apology because I refused to applaud the zeal you apply in separating yourself from those who might otherwise mean you well.

[George_T_Rahn]

But it is possible to affirm that each person’s interpretation is valid for that person even if I don’t agree with it. Scientific analysis includes peer review as well as peer opinion. It is to the view that it has prejudicial value for only that review panel until something comes to challenge it.