meaning of sin? - Page 4

Thomas · 11-11-2006, 07:00 PM

Hi Francis -

Quahom's covered that one off.

The only thing I would add is sin against the Holy Spirit - I do not read it that the Third Person of the Trinity is more touchy and less forgiving than the other Two, but rather that the sin is one of 'rejection' - and rejection of the Spirit is a rejection of God, and thus of one's salvation - so again, the ball is in our court, as it were.

If God had His way, we'd all be saved. It is not He who abandons us, it is we who abandon Him.

Thomas

Marietta · 11-11-2006, 07:17 PM

Thomas, The knowledge of God and Evil is polarity. Before we ate from this tree we held a perfect balance of polarity, good and evil, black and white, hot and cold, male and female, pain and pleasure and so on and so on.

Love and Light, Marietta

Thomas · 11-11-2006, 07:54 PM

Thomas, The knowledge of God and Evil is polarity. Before we ate from this tree we held a perfect balance of polarity, good and evil, black and white, hot and cold, male and female, pain and pleasure and so on and so on.

I think all this is ancilliary, or subsequent to the fact.

If man knew good and evil - how could eating the fruit of the tree change what he already knew?

It's not the fruit, it's the act - the intention - an act in express defiance of the Divine Command - that's the turning point. The 'fruit' held the promise whispered by the serpent, a promise that proved to be false, the fruit was not sweet, but bitter.

Your view of polarity is a subsequence of sin. Man prior to the Fall was in harmony with God, and with Creation. This is a Unity. Everything working towards one end. What upset the polarity? What upset the balance? What shattered that Primordial Unity of Being?

Eating the fruit.
How? Your answer doesn't address the key issue.

Man knew right from wrong, but nothing 'wrong' had been done or existed, nothing wrong had been willed, by God or by man, until that fateful moment.

By eating the fruit man actualised something which God did not want actualised - evil. Man understood evil as a concept, he is a rational creature, but it was not a reality. By his action, it became a reality, and it changed the world, all the rest, as they say, is history...

Thomas

Marietta · 11-11-2006, 08:06 PM

Thomas, The knowledge of God and Evil is polarity. Before we ate from this tree we held a perfect balance of polarity, good and evil, black and white, hot and cold, male and female, pain and pleasure and so on and so on.

Greetings Thomas, Being without polarity does not mean that man knew good and evil, it means that man held both good and evil an balance without experiencing the polar opposites (good and evil) of polarity. Man experienced perfection in all aspects of polarity not the extremes.
Indeed the fruit of polarity is not sweet but a bitter fruit to the very soul. This is what brought about the birth of ego bringing unrest, death and decay of the body and the mind.

The symbolic fruit is just that symbolism. There wasn't a literal tree that a man and woman pulled a piece of fruit from and ate.
We ate of our desires to experience opposites (polarity).

Love and Light, Marietta

Thomas · 11-12-2006, 12:09 AM

I still think you're not tackling the fundamental theological point, but a post-primordial symptom.

Polarity: The possession or manifestation of two opposing attributes, tendencies, or principles.

In matters of contingency, of course, there's up and down, left and right ... but man never experienced opposition in his essence, so polarity in those terms would have been an alien concept.

When he opposed God, then he introduced polarity - difference - he saw he was naked, and was ashamed, and hid.

He knew he was naked before. He knew when he saw a cat that it was a cat, not a man, but he did not draw anything from the distinction. Only after the fall did he comprehend duality in its unfortunate aspect of opposition, and in so doing saw himself as less than himself - hence his shame.

The fundamental metaphysical principle I'm sticking to, is that man introduced evil into the world by a free act of his own will, in defiance of God. It was not and never is willed by God, nor is it a necessity - hence the metaphysical view that evil has no fundamental 'reality' precisely because it is not Divinely willed.

It's a self-inflicted wound.

Thomas

Marietta · 11-12-2006, 01:21 AM

Greetings Thomas, Thank you for the reply.

Before man ate from the tree of Good and evil, polarity did not exist in the world. There were not men and women, hot and cold, black and white, pain and pleasure, electric and magnetic, there was simply a perfect balance of all things. This was paradise.
We now live in a system where everything has a polar opposite that conflicts with its polar opposite as long as they are in disunity. Once we come back into perfect balance polarity will no longer exist. Man experienced polarity when perfection ceased to fulfill his desires and he wanted more to experience and yes at this point he stepped away from Source (God).
Duality didn't exist before he ate from the tree of good and evil.
We agree that man introduced polarity into the world by a free act of his own will, in direct opposition to the will of Source (God). All you have to do is look around you to see that evil has a very fundamental reality within this existence. I don't follow what you are trying to say with this. Please explain.

Love and Light, Marietta

Dor · 11-12-2006, 01:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marietta

Before man ate from the tree of Good and evil, polarity did not exist in the world. There were not men and women, hot and cold, black and white, pain and pleasure, electric and magnetic, there was simply a perfect balance of all things. This was paradise.

Wait a minute so your telling me the Bible is wrong?

BlaznFattyz · 11-12-2006, 01:34 AM

god created polarity before he even created man. he created heaven and earth, day and night, earth and sea...

Thomas · 11-12-2006, 02:15 AM

Well, there are two aspects to this answer.

The first is that evil was introduced by man, not by God. Evil exists then as a possibility, and indeed a potentiality, but is not 'present' as a reality until that fateful act. In the act the possibility of evil is realised, made real and actual, by the act itself.

The possibility, the potential, for evil, did not exist before man, because only a rational being can comprehend evil. Man created evil, not God – even though God knew of it, allowed for it, in giving man free will. The only 'real' act of evil is man's willing something other than what God wills for man. This was the freedom he sought, to taste freedom absolutely, to be not dependent on, and thus not beholden to, the will of God.

(One might argue this was simply the 'will to live' making a terrible mistake.)

But to exercise his own will, of his own volition, for good, assumes man knows the ultimate end, the ultimate good, of all things, which we do not – only God knows that. So at best an act of will on man's own behalf can only ever be 'a stab in the dark' – in a sense if he does the right thing it's more by luck than judgement, because he cannot judge accurately if he is not omniscient.

St Thomas Aquinas stated that no man wills evil for its own sake, rather he wills a 'lesser good' for his own sake, to suit his own end, which he can only guess at, and does not know.

Only by conforming his own will to the will of His creator can he 'know' certitude. Only the pure of heart can see God (as states the beatitudes). A pure heart wants for nothing other than what God wants of it.

(Christ asked St Thomas Aquinas, "what is it you want of me?" The Angelic Doctor replied, "You, Lord, only You.")

Once evil was introduced into the world man suffered its dreadful gravity, that continually drags him down from his birthright. In this sense evil is very real, it is a crippling wound, a corruption of his primordial nature.

Now, if man vanished overnight, if God struck every trace of man off the record, as it were, 'the evil that men do' would vanish with him. Evil is not what God does, and nor does nature – and in that sense it has no fundamental reality, because it is not willed by God as a reality.

(Our understanding of God would be very different if it were. At best we could only regard Him as capricious, as dangerous and untrustworthy – because we could not rely on any constancy on His part. He certainly would not be 'good' as we currently understand it, but spiteful, mean and cruel.)

So without man evil has no grasp of the world, no place in the world, no actuality in the created order. Man depends on God for his actuality. Evil depends on man – the serpent depends on man's act for its fulfillment.

The second aspect, which is a whole other subject, is that of fallen angels. This idea supposes a source of evil other than man, but that would require a discussion on the roots an development of Hebraic angelology, and perhaps creation itself.

Thomas

Thomas · 11-12-2006, 02:23 AM

Before man ate from the tree of Good and evil, polarity did not exist in the world. There were not men and women, hot and cold, black and white, pain and pleasure, electric and magnetic, there was simply a perfect balance of all things. This was paradise.

Hang on a minute. There were, unless you completely discard the Creation. In the six days we have heaven and earth; dark and deep; light and dark, evening and morning;the waters above and the waters below; land and sea; day and night; heat and cold, and the proliferation of species...

There was harmony. Unity in Trinity.

thomas

moseslmpg · 11-12-2006, 04:38 AM

How could man have created something that God did not? It doesn't make sense to me that man could have single handedly created evil by eating a fruit. Does it say this anywhere in the Bible?

From what I understand, God created evil and he stays in thick darkness, etc. What about that?

RevKelly · 11-12-2006, 02:14 PM

1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1 Thessalonians 5:21
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good

To prove if something is good or not, you have to ask what it's opposite is.

Is Love good? What is it's opposite? The thesaurus says Indifference is the opposite of Love. But Indifference is the midpoint. It's not caring one way or another. The opposite of Love is Hate. The opposite of Happiness and Joy is Misery and Despair. The opposite of Mercy and Compassion is Cruelty and Malice. The opposite of Patience is Outrage. The opposite of Courage is Terror. Indifference is the midpoint in all of those.

The true definition of sin is acting in a way that turns you away from God. God is love. Love is kind (Mercy and Compassion), love is Patient... etc...

Just my opinion,

Kelly

Francis king · 11-12-2006, 02:33 PM

yes, for me, also, denying this spirit, is the real sin, the only sin, against the spirit .. and also RevKelly, yes, its also acting in a way that turns u away from god.. like that, too

majin · 11-12-2006, 04:04 PM

Thank you all for your rather interesting replies

I hope and pray that dor and mariatta sort out there indifferences

Forgiveness is one of the notches on the key to eternity

Quahom1 · 11-12-2006, 04:38 PM

Why can't sin be looked at from a physics perspective?

For example, what is the opposite of heat?
What is the opposite of dimension?
What is the opposite of matter?
What is the opposite of density?
What is the opposite of velocity?
What is the opposite of time?
What is the opposite of energy?
What is the opposite of Light?
What is the opposite of sound?

Answer: nothing

There is no opposite; there is only varying degrees of something.

Likewise with sin, with love, with faith, with hope.

In the discipline known as Aikido, onesness or balance is in the center. Any action outside the center immediately causes imbalance.

Since life is not immobile or perfectly still, the trick then is to remain as close to the center as possible. When an aggresive force approaches the center one can use the energy of that force to one's advantage, by either sending it away in the other direction, or bringing it into the center, thus into balance and oneness.

God doesn't expect man to remain dead center, because then man would experience nothing. What He does expect is for man to look to God to help him stay close enough to center so as not to go so far out that he can't get back to center, yet step far enough away to learn the lessons and meaning of living.

v/r

Joshua