Trailblazer
Veteran Member
God designed humans to be mortal, so the buck stops there.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Is God made in your own image? Do you always agree with them?
- Thread starter Leahpolitan_icecream
- Start date
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
I believe that God intended for humans to eventually enter into mortality - and they did when they decided to partake of the Fruit - but the two human bodies He originally designed - Adam and Eve - were not mortal.
There was no sin or death in the Garden of Eden until Adam and Eve partook of the Fruit.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I do not believe that the story of Adam and Eve is literally true. I believe it is allegorical. 30: ADAM AND EVE
I believe that humans were created by God through evolution to be mortal -- to live and die and pass to the spiritual world where they will get another body that will be immortal.
I believe what Paul says, that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, and that means they cannot exist in Heaven. When Paul says these dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever, he is referring to the spiritual world (Heaven), which will last forever. Our physical bodies will die and we will be raised (resurrected) as spiritual bodies that will be suited to go to Heaven and last forever.
1 Corinthians 15:40-54 New Living Translation
40 There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies.
44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
50 What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever.
51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!
54 Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die,[c] this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory.[d]
Read full chapter
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-30.html
Ok - but I do - and I believe that the literal Salvation offered by the Lord Jesus Christ makes no sense without a literal Fall of Man.
Good for you - but the Bible does not support the idea of evolution and I do not believe it.
I do believe that God had always intended for Man to enter into mortality - die - and be Resurrected - but He allowed them to make that choice - by giving them the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
I agree - and I believe that Paul is describing the conditions of the Fall that have been placed on all of us which need to be overcome by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I also believe that Man fell, but not because Adam and Eve ate a piece to fruit off a tree.
If you read that chapter 30: ADAM AND EVE, it explains how I believe that Man fell. Below is my paraphrasing of that part of the chapter.
Baha’is do not believe in original sin, that sin was inherited from Adam and Eve, so there is no need for redemption from original sin. We believe that Adam was a Prophet, so His soul was in the spiritual world before His body was born into the material world. When Adam was born and entered the human world, He came out from the paradise into the world of bondage, the material world. From the spiritual world, in the height of purity and absolute goodness, He entered into the world of good and evil, the material world... This attachment to the material world, which is sin, was inherited by the descendants of Adam... It is because of this attachment that men have been deprived of essential spirituality and instead have the propensity to sin.
Those who acknowledged the cross sacrifice and turned toward Jesus and received the profusion of His bounties, were saved from this attachment and sin, obtained everlasting life, were delivered from the chains of bondage to the material world, and attained to the world of liberty. They were freed from the vices of the human world, and were blessed by the virtues of the Kingdom.
The Bible does not contradict evolution, not unless you interpret Genesis literally.
Christians Divided Over Science Of Human Origins
I believe that we will be resurrected, but not into a physical body.
What I believe is meant by the resurrection is that when our body dies, our spirit (soul) is resurrected and passes from one world into another. After our spirit is resurrected it continues to live forever. Please note that on the context of the afterlife the words spirit and soul have the same meaning.
421. When the body is no longer able to perform the bodily functions in the natural world that correspond to the spirit’s thoughts and affections, which the spirit has from the spiritual world, man is said to die. This takes place when the respiration of the lungs and the beatings of the heart cease. But the man does not die; he is merely separated from the bodily part that was of use to him in the world, while the man himself continues to live. It is said that the man himself continues to live since man is not a man because of his body but because of his spirit, for it is the spirit that thinks in man, and thought with affection is what constitutes man. Evidently, then, the death of man is merely his passing from one world into another. And this is why in the Word in its internal sense “death” signifies resurrection and continuation of life. Heaven and Hell, p. 351
I agree with that, except that I do not believe that the Fall came about from Adam and Eve eating a piece of fruit.
What Baha’is believe regarding how Adam brought sin into the world and how Christ saved us from that sin is explained below:
Question.—In verse 22 of chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians it is written: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” What is the meaning of these words?
Answer.—Know that there are two natures in man: the physical nature and the spiritual nature. The physical nature is inherited from Adam, and the spiritual nature is inherited from the Reality of the Word of God, which is the spirituality of Christ. The physical nature is born of Adam, but the spiritual nature is born from the bounty of the Holy Spirit. The first is the source of all imperfection; the second is the source of all perfection.
The Christ sacrificed Himself so that men might be freed from the imperfections of the physical nature and might become possessed of the virtues of the spiritual nature. This spiritual nature, which came into existence through the bounty of the Divine Reality, is the union of all perfections and appears through the breath of the Holy Spirit. It is the divine perfections; it is light, spirituality, guidance, exaltation, high aspiration, justice, love, grace, kindness to all, philanthropy, the essence of life. It is the reflection of the splendor of the Sun of Reality.
All sin comes from the demands of nature, and these demands, which arise from the physical qualities, are not sins with respect to the animals, while for man they are sin. The animal is the source of imperfections, such as anger, sensuality, jealousy, avarice, cruelty, pride: all these defects are found in animals but do not constitute sins. But in man they are sins.
Adam is the cause of man’s physical life; but the Reality of Christ—that is to say, the Word of God—is the cause of spiritual life. It is “a quickening spirit,” meaning that all the imperfections which come from the requirements of the physical life of man are transformed into human perfections by the teachings and education of that spirit. Therefore, Christ was a quickening spirit, and the cause of life in all mankind.
Adam was the cause of physical life, and as the physical world of man is the world of imperfections, and imperfections are the equivalent of death, Paul compared the physical imperfections to death.
But the mass of the Christians believe that, as Adam ate of the forbidden tree, He sinned in that He disobeyed, and that the disastrous consequences of this disobedience have been transmitted as a heritage and have remained among His descendants. Hence Adam became the cause of the death of humanity. This explanation is unreasonable and evidently wrong, for it means that all men, even the Prophets and the Messengers of God, without committing any sin or fault, but simply because they are the posterity of Adam, have become without reason guilty sinners, and until the day of the sacrifice of Christ were held captive in hell in painful torment.
This is far from the justice of God. If Adam was a sinner, what is the sin of Abraham? What is the fault of Isaac, or of Joseph? Of what is Moses guilty?
Some Answered Questions, pp. 118-120
Read more: 29: EXPLANATION OF VERSE TWENTY-TWO, CHAPTER FIFTEEN, OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS
ecco
Veteran Member
Perhaps you need to review the conversation and specify exactly what it is you are saying.
ecco
Veteran Member
You must be referring to that incident where omnipotent/omniscient god created A&E to His exacting standards - standards that included knowing they would disobey Him. He intentionally set them up to fail and then punished them for doing it. Whatta guy!.
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
He did "set them up" to enter into mortality - true - but mortality is no punishment.
Or are you of the opinion that tests designed to gauge our aptitude and worthiness are "punishments"?
God created me in His and Her own image.
Therefore I seek to get people to act after my ways.
The Hebrew word for image means shade and the three letters that spell it mean:
righteous man reaching for a closed source.
righteous man/ priest reaching/loving a closed source/final water.
ecco
Veteran Member
Punishments:
Getting kicked out of the Garden
Painful childbirths
All following generations born into sin.
Those punishments.
A test is not worth anything if the outcome is predetermined and known. A test is not worth anything if the entities being tested are designed to fail. The only thing this test proved is that your god can successfully create entities that will fail exactly as they were designed to fail.
To believe otherwise is to deny the omniscience of your god.
ecco
Veteran Member
As I said... That's really egotistical.
ecco
Veteran Member
I'll not chase you down this rabbit hole any farther.
Oh and what should I be doing to help my neighbor?
You are the egotistical one. Telling me not to love my neighbor, and not seeing that I want to because you are so devoid of religion.
I want to be better by trying to be like God. As I do so, I want to pull others along with me.
Last edited:
Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
Nope - the Fall of Adam and Eve is a story of choice and consequence - not disobedience and punishment.
God's command to Adam to not partake of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was different than other commandments - such as the commandment to not murder - because rather than just saying that it was wrong - He told Adam the consequence of what would happen if he did.
"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
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." (Genesis 2:16-17)
Therefore - if Adam wanted to die - there would be no reason to not partake of the Fruit.
There was no moral absolute attached to the commandment.
God told Adam the consequence - not punishment - of what would happen to him if he were to partake of the Fruit.
Considering that neither Adam nor Eve had any Knowledge of Good and Evil before they partook of the Fruit - which included the knowledge of nakedness and the feeling of shame - there would have been no sexual intercourse or childbirth in the Garden.
Since there was no death either - (mortality) - there would be no change in their condition - no children.
God telling Eve that He would "greatly multiply" her sorrow in childbirth was His explaining to her that there would surely be pain in childbirth - not that He "injected" or "increased" the pain - but that pain would be an absolute condition of childbirth.
It is similar to when God said "thou shalt surely die" to Adam - it's not like there is anything more than death - there is no "sure" way to die - but He is denoting an absolute aspect to it - that eating of the Fruit will always - without doubt - lead to death.
The same "infinitive absolute" is used by God when He said "greatly multiply" - He was emphasizing a certainty - that pain in childbirth would completely and always occur.
That was one of the consequences of partaking of the Fruit - because she had become mortal - not a punishment.
And even though all people sin - that is not a punishment - because we all choose to sin.
The Lord Jesus Christ - a literal descendant of Adam - lived His entire mortal life without committing any sin - proving that it is us who decide when to sin.
Predetermined and known by who?
Not us.
A teacher may know which of their students are going to pass and fail a particular test before they even take it - but does that mean it would be fair for the teacher to just start failing and passing people without letting them prove what they can and cannot do by being tested.
Mortality is a test for us - not Him.
We want to prove to Him - and ourselves - what we are capable of - that way when we receive our rewards and commission after this life we will know - for ourselves - that we have truly earned what we have received.
God designed Adam and Eve to live forever in the Garden - it was they who chose to partake of the Fruit and begin the test of mortality.
We have all been designed to succeed - not fail - which is why the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world and died for us.
Adam and Eve did not fail. At all.
None of us are failures for being mortal - that makes no sense.