Who are we?

 What did God intend, what happened to that, and how did we get here?

• Genesis 2:15-17

  • Why a Garden?

    • Where is the beauty of nature best displayed and most easily worked? In a fertile land, will providence for all of man's physical need.

    • Contrast: Mesopotamia is where historical man emanated from and all the same has been made to be most uninhabitable in almost every sense.

  • "You may Freely"

    • God points out where man is free

  • Was it seriously an actual tree?

    • What language is being used? what genre are we reading?

      • This part of Genesis is mythological in nature. A myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involves supernatural beings or events.

      • Thus, the tree is not necessarily literally a fruit tree.

  • What narrative do we have at this point?

    • All of creation at our disposal to live in harmony with God and only one option to renounce it all, lets elaborate on this by asking another question

  • What is the "tree" of "Good and evil", and what is its "fruit"? What does "eating" it mean?

    • let us first consider the "landscape"

    • Every tree but one we are made to receive nourishment from, and all of them good

      •  If the tree is the producer of fruit i.e. nourishment, then we must ask the question where our nourishment comes from?

        • We were not made for any one particular tree but many as gift from a particular source, from which came/come all good things.

      • The tree of good and evil would not be tempting if it were only of evil since it would appear ugly and distasteful, rather evil is duplicitous leeching of the good.

      • What is the fruit of such a tree? Fruit is the sweetest part of the plant, which contains its seed. They who ingest it taste of its sweetness and as changed by what they eat. 

      • Eating it comes to be a participation, a reception of its reality i.e. in the deceptive good therein, which also brings about a lack of good, a corruption which erodes one's inner harmony, and therefore all harmony and such a harmony is also lost without the one who consumes it insofar as one can know a tree by its fruits.

• Why are we created at all?

  • CCC 1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

God's original vision for an original Holiness (CCC 374-375)

 The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ. The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original "state of holiness and justice".250 This grace of original holiness was "to share in. . .divine life".

• What is Holiness? Is it not perfect, wholistic harmony? Man being directly and intentionally molded by God, had a clear and uninhibited or obstructed. This has implications everywhere.

• We were made for relationship read (Genesis 5:3)

  • Adam was made co-creator with his wife Eve, and they born a son in whose likeness?

    • The fact we are made in God's image and likeness, and understood in light of this verse, suggests that we are not only Son's of God but are somehow a part of His family

    • This is only possible through covenant, and it is thus we see just how we were made for a relationship with God and exactly in what expression we find it. "Your decrees are very sure; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore."(Psalm 93:5)

  • If there is time we will continue exploring this and the next session

• The Temptation and the Fall (Genesis 3:1-7)

• What can be said about the communication of God's love to man at this point?

  • If man truly would have understood God's love for Him and all of its meaning to the fullest extent. Would he have fell for this trap?

• Why a serpent? (know scripture through more scripture)

  • Venomous Bite (Numbers 21:6-9, John 3:14-15)

  • Nahash the Ammonite (1 Samuel 11:1) - Nahash means serpent

  • More in a bit

• He first asks a question in such a way that the listener necessarily assumes true in the implicit assertion used and not only this but also he misconstrues and dramatized what God had commanded. 

  • He makes it about survival, saying "any tree?".

  • How has the narrative our first parents given now supplanted by one of anxiety, mistrust. and revolution.

• Eve in the state of holiness genuinely answers but has already accepted one of the enemy's implicit propositions. 

  • This communication with the demonic is also tied to the title "serpent" which is a symbol of divinization.

  • She responds by adding "touching it" assenting to the distrust that the serpent had for his creator

    • Objective acting against trust

• Understanding the success, he was having, makes the boldest of claims saying that she will be as good as God, an independent and thriving Creature if she only disobeys.

  • Claims that God is both good and evil

  • Suddenly, Eve sees the fruit anew as though it is Good, Captivating, and true (reassociating the transcendental to a finite good)

• She consumed it and it consumed her, and she also encouraged her husband to try some since mutiny desires company an therefore conspiracy, for if one has guilt, one has made oneself the enemy, and who better to make an accomplice but a souse

  • All the same, shame brought such a discord in their own hearts, opened up for them the possibility of using/harming each other. Knowing this to be a possibility to be true, because of their respective experience and also no longer feeling confident about their filiation with God, lost grip on their humanity and something of their dignity. Having experienced these things, they isolated themselves from God and each other, as they went from trust in God 

    • CCC 397

    • Distrust

• Adam failed in his vocation (omission), and in doing so fell with his wife

  • Provider

  • Protector

  • Spiritual Leader

• Hope yet remains (Genesis 3:15, 17-19)

• No amount of darkness can stand the light

• What does verse 15 tells us about where man now ranks? Has this changed?

  • Right away God's mercy moves and speaks to man words that his nature now requires, that salvation is possible and, in the works.

  • God not only describes how man is still above the demonic and still has power to resist them not of man's own accord but God's, he also speaks of what lies ahead.

• Does it sound like there is mercy in 17 thru 19? How might God still be revealing His mercy while exacting justice?

  • Let us first consider the connotation of the words used.

    • "Because you have [done this]" 

      • this does sound accusative, but it remains that it is a state of Causality. Thus we see it is the sin which condemns and God who reveals its truth

    • Pain shall you experience in even the joy filled things and death shall come to your physical body

      • as we read this verse in light of the cross of Jesus, we understand that if we are to live and live well our sanctification is dependent upon the perseverance and fortitude it takes for a finite sinner to grow closer to the Divine, the Perfect, the Infinite, the Innocent, and the Holy

      • When Christ entered into solidarity through his Baptism of repentance, he also entered into the very mystery of sin and drew us up. (more on this later)

Consider Reading (Acts of the Apostles 2:14-36)

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says concerning him,

‘I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

moreover my flesh will live in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One experience corruption.

You have made known to me the ways of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,

‘He was not abandoned to Hades,

nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”