Quote:
Originally Posted by SavedbyGrace
What is the substance which when introduced into man created sin in man?
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I believe that this question defines the problem in Lee's (and your) view of the fall. It is the presumption that there must be a substance taken in for man to sin. To have sin within him. But there is no substance taken in for us to know anything. Note that the thing that God comments on concerning man is his knowing. But when I look at the passage, including in a rather poor Hebrew interlinear, I am uncertain whether even God commenting on man's knowing is about what man simply knows, or about man is coming to know. In other words, discerning.
Put another way, what man will decide for himself from his own perspective, experience, etc.
But whether or not that is a correct understanding, there is nothing fundamentally required to be "introduced into man" for him to be sinful. The only requirement was that he listened to the voice of the snake and exercised his free will to choose. Something that was always a possibility anyway. While there was only one crack at this and we therefore can only speculate, I believe it would be a reasonable speculation to assume that even without a snake to entice Eve, then Adam, to disobey, the possibility was always there.
And the ensuing records describe the cause of man's curse as disobedience, not the introduction of foreign substance. If substance is required, then the whole idea of a spiritual realm is meaningless. If we had to eat to fall, then we must have to do something similar to be freed from that fall. And saying words would not be it because there is no "substance" to the words. You can argue that God is in them, or behind them.
But God is not "substance" in the way that you seem to require for purposes of the fall. You are requiring man to physically take something in to fall, yet no such requirement is made for becoming freed from it. If there is substance to it, then substance must be removed to take away its hold.
No, the whole think is predicated upon disobedience. And what better way to establish the act of disobedience than in something that has physical evidence? And what better (or worse) enticement than the lure of knowing what God knows.
By the way. I note that the verse does say that man became like God ("us") in that he knew good from evil. But that is a specific comparison. It is not that man is simply like God. He has attained some level of common knowledge. (I will suggest that it is not truly the same, because man's version of good v evil does not consistently agree with God's. Therefore, the similarity is not complete even in this one thing.)