BARNEY said:
"When God said to such a human that if the human ate from a tree he would die. Don't you think that when God said such a thing as that, to that human he would understand God?"[/Quote\]
Nancy said:
Not if said human had no knowledge of good and evil...?[/Quote\]
BARNEY says
After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit (
Ge 2:17; 3:5, 6), Jehovah said: “Here the man has become like one of us in
knowing good and bad.” (
Ge 3:22) This apparently did not mean merely having knowledge of what was good and what was bad for them, for the first man and woman had such knowledge by reason of God’s commands to them. In other words why would God command Adam and Eve to do or not do something, if they weren't able to understand the command. Furthermore, God’s words at
Genesis 3:22 could not pertain to their now knowing what was bad by experience, for Jehovah said that they had become like him and he has not learned what is bad by doing it. (
Ps 92:14, 15) Evidently, Adam and Eve got to know what was good and what was bad in the special sense of now judging for themselves what was good and what was bad. They were in a idolatrous way placing their judgment above God’s, disobediently becoming a law to themselves, as it were, instead of obeying Jehovah, who has both the right and the wisdom necessary to determine good and bad/good and evil for what he created. So their independent knowledge, or standard, of good and bad was not like that of Jehovah. Rather, it was one that led them to misery, not just for Adam and Eve themselves but for all mankind—
Jer 10:23.[/Quote\]
BARNEY said:
I also believe that Adam knew what death was when God told Adam he would die if he ate from the forbidden tree, so Adam knew what was at stake."[/Quote\]
Nancy said:
This I am not so sure of. How could Adam have known death when he never saw or experienced it. It was spiritual death, a broken relationship between Creator and creation. And, I don't see as he understood this well enough as, he allowed himself to be tempted into sin right along with his Eve.[/Quote\]
Barney says:
The first reference to death in the Scriptures occurs at
Genesis 2:16, 17 in God’s command to the first man concerning the eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, violation of which command would result in death. However, death among animals as a natural process was evidently already in effect, since they are passed over completely in the Biblical presentation of the introduction of death into the human family. (Compare
2Pe 2:12.) The gravity of God’s warning about the death penalty for disobedience would therefore be understandable to his human son, Adam. In other words animals died as they have always died, so Adam most likely saw animals die, he understood what death was.(Ge
3:19; Jas 1:14, 15)
If spiritual death was what God was talking about when God commanded Adam not to eat from the forbidden tree and it couldn't be physical death because Adam had no experience with physical death how could it be only spiritual death being talked about because Adam had no experience with that either. So on what basis are you saying it had to be spiritual death, that had to do with the command to not eat from the forbidden tree. Because it seems to me that what you're saying is that the death God was speaking of here was spiritual death because what, Adam understood spiritual death but not physical death. So if as you say it couldn't be physical death because as you say Adam had no experience with such death, how could you say it had to do with spiritual death, because Adam had no experience with that either, right? Now you and I both know that God was talking about physical death, but I'm not saying they didn't experience spiritual death too when they disobeyed. We know that because God told Adam after he disobeyed:
"you will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Also Satan the Devil used a serpent to convey a malicious lie. The Bible account says: “Now the serpent was the most cautious of all the wild animals of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it said to the woman: ‘Did God really say that you must not eat from every tree of the garden?’”—
Genesis 3:1.
To that Eve replied: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But God has said about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden: ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.’” Next the serpent said to her: “You certainly will not die. For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.” Thus, Satan asserted that Jehovah was a liar who was holding back something good from our first parents.—
Genesis 3:2-5.
Eve believed what she heard. She gazed at the tree. It looked so pleasing, so desirable! She reached out, took some of the fruit, and began to eat it. How could it be said that Eve believed the serpent about she wouldn't die if she didn't have a clue what the serpent was talking about.
